Lead Stories

When the nonprofit Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre in New Orleans was brought to the brink of bankruptcy by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, the board proposed to sell a portion of the property to a for-profit developer for use as a restaurant.  A member of the corporation who was also president of the Guild of Le Petit virulently opposed the deal and filed suit seeking an injunction to stop the sale.  He claimed that the proposed sale had never been approved by the membership as required by the state’s nonprofit corporation law. 

A nonprofit’s whistleblower policy first enacted after an at-will employee had begun his employment does not create a barrier to his termination, an appellate court in New York has held.

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a trial court and ruled that an ordinance that barred door-to-door solicitation after 6 p.m. is unconstitutional.  After considering every justification advanced by the City of Englewood (OH), the Court said the law was not “narrowly tailored” to serve significant governmental interests.  (Ohio Citizen Action v. City of Englewood, 6th Cir., No. 10-3265, 2/2/12.)

A member of a Pennsylvania homeowners’ association who engaged in a proxy fight for control of the association’s board when proxy votes were not permitted under state law has lost his fight for control, even though the vote of the members present at a special meeting, when tallied without counting the proxy votes, would have been sufficient to remove the board.  An appellate court in Pennsylvania has affirmed a trial court decision that the election was a nullity. (Barcia v. Fenlon, PA Commonwealth Ct., No. 2352 C.D. 2010, 2/2/12.)

When does a civil court have jurisdiction to resolve an internal church dispute?

The facile answer is that courts have jurisdiction in cases that can be decided on “neutral principles of law” and do not have jurisdiction in cases that would entangle the court in ecclesiastical matters involving religious doctrine.  The trick, of course, is deciding where the line should be drawn.

Four state appellate courts have recently been forced to draw the line in separate cases.  In two cases, the courts accepted jurisdiction and in two they did not.  But two of the appellate decisions reversed contrary decisions of a trial court.

Is a 16-year-old who is asked by a nonprofit agency to drive some other participants home from a youth event when the agency had trouble fitting all of the participants into its vans considered a “volunteer” for the agency?

The issue was important because the driver was involved in an accident and his four passengers were killed. When the agency was sued, the insurance carrier claimed that the incident was excluded because accidents involving vehicles driven by “any insured” were not covered and it said the driver was an insured “volunteer.”