Lead Stories

President Donald J. Trump has been ordered to pay $2 million in damages for improperly using the charitable assets of his private foundation to intervene in the 2016 Presidential election and further his political interests.  A trial court judge has rejected a request by the New York Attorney General that he be ordered to pay double damages because he has stipulated to “a number of proactive conditions so that the conduct which engendered this petition should not occur in the future.”

In December, 2010, Ruth Stumm executed her will, leaving one-eighth of the residue of her estate to the First Presbyterian Church of Wood-Ridge, N.J., “or its successor” to establish an endowment in the name of a local resident. 

In 2015, she was declared mentally incompetent and she died in 2016.  The Wood-Ridge church had dissolved in 2014 and transferred all of its assets to the Presbytery of the Palisades, its legal successor.  Her executor asked the court for “instructions” on the rightful recipient of the residue.

The Supreme Court of Alaska has ruled that only the National Council of the Girl Scouts of the United States, a representative body that meets every three years to elect members of the National Board of Directors, has authority to increase the dues for Girl Scouts across the country, and has held that a $10 increase approved by the National Board in 2016 is improper.

An appellate court in Washington has refused to follow several federal Circuit Courts of Appeals and refused to permit confidential ex parte communications between an attorney representing a defendant hospital and a physician employed by an outside contractor in the operation of the hospital’s emergency room when the hospital has been sued by a patient.  The state Court of Appeals, by a vote of 2-1, has refused to expand the scope of the privilege.

A federal District Court in Montana has put at least a temporary hold on the Internal Revenue Service’s effort to suspend the requirement for tax-exempt organizations to file a list of their significant donors on Schedule B to the Form 990 tax information return.  The Administration had eliminated the requirement for all exempt organizations except 501(c)(3) public charities by publishing a new Revenue Procedure in 2018.  (Rev. Proc.

The Supreme Court of New Hampshire has denied standing to a “branch church” of Christian Science to contest the administration of an original testamentary trust of Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Church of Christian Science, when it is only a “potential” beneficiary of the trust.  It has weighed five specific criteria for determining whether a potential beneficiary has a “special interest” that would justify standing and found the branch church lacking.