Lead Stories

A federal District Court in Nebraska has issued a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of a local ordinance in the City of Lincoln that would prohibit for-profit companies from placing clothing collection boxes on private real estate and would require at least 80 percent of the proceeds to be used for charitable purposes.  The Court said the for-profit plaintiff showed a likelihood of success in bringing the case.  (Linc-Drop, Inc. v. City of Lincoln, D. NE, No.

A community foundation and its board president have been dismissed from a suit by a former executive of a grantee who claimed that their defamation caused him to lose a job in the office of the Mayor of Indianapolis.  An appellate court in Indiana has affirmed a trial court finding that the president’s factual comments were true and could not be the basis for defamation or other claims.  (Miller v. Central Indiana Community Foundation, Ct. of App., IN, No. 49A04-1309-PL-451, 6/11/14.)

Nearly ten years after an unincorporated association sued another unincorporated association, the Supreme Court of Kentucky has thrown out the case, stating that as a matter of general state law an unincorporated association can neither sue nor be sued in the association’s name.  (United Brotherhood of Carpenters v. Birchwood Conservancy, KY, No. 2011-SC-000659, 6/19/14.)

The great-great-grandson of William H. Seward, who was President Lincoln’s Secretary of State during the Civil War, lacks standing to reopen the estate of Seward’s grandson, William H.

A teenage spectator at a nonprofit youth football league game who was asked to help the officials by holding the first down marker is protected by the federal Volunteer Protection Act and is not liable for injuries of a player who ran into the marker, a trial court in Connecticut has held.  The plaintiff did not prove that the teenager who helped game officials had been guilty of gross negligence.  (Hochman v. Eddy, Superior Ct., CT, Ansonia-Milford, No. CV 136013530, 3/24/14.)

The Old North Church in Boston cannot be held liable for violation of state consumer protection laws in a suit by a visitor who tripped over a step while moving into a pew during a tour of the building.  The issue arose because the court had also found the church immune from liability under the state’s recreational use statute, which permits liability only for “willful, wanton or reckless” conduct when making its facilities available free for recreational use.  (