Lead Stories

A nonprofit association in New York City has been told that it cannot collect $185,000 in unauthorized withdrawals from its account when it failed to review its monthly bank statements and complain over a period of five years.  A trial court has granted Capital One Bank’s summary judgment motion to dismiss the complaint.  (Royal Arcanum Hospital Association of Kings County v. Herrnkind, Supreme Court of NY, Kings County, 3/28/12.)

In an opinion filed less than a month after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said it would not consider the Legislature’s standards for determining qualification of a charity eligible for charitable tax exemptions (See Nonprofit Issues® 4/1/12), the state’s Commonwealth Court, its intermediate appellate court, has shown how hard it may be to rely solely on prior case law to qualify as an “institution of purely public charity” eligible for exemption under the state’s Constitution.  The Court has denied real estate tax

An appellate court in Illinois has allowed the estates of an employee’s wife and two children to sue a nonprofit ministry for negligently failing to protect them from being murdered by the ministry’s employee.  In rejecting the ministry’s motion to dismiss the Complaint, the Court said that the estate had alleged sufficient facts to sustain a claim that the ministry had voluntarily undertaken to protect the family but had negligently failed to perform its duties.  (R

We regularly feature answers to questions from readers in our “Your Legal Questions Answered” column. The full list can be viewed on the site. 

May we pay to cut dangerous trees at member’s house?

A federal District Court in Tennessee has disqualified the former general counsel of a nonprofit professional organization from representing a former employee suing the organization for wrongful termination.  It said the attorney’s service as general counsel for more than a decade creates “a substantial risk that confidential factual information that would normally have been obtained in the prior representation would materially advance the client’s position in the subsequent matter.”

In the “latest installment of long-running serial litigation” involving control over an Oregon homeowners’ association, the Oregon Court of Appeals has reversed a trial court and held that a court has jurisdiction to consider judicial removal of members of the board of directors, even where the association’s bylaws provide a means of removal by the members.  The Court has reversed a trial court decision dismissing an action seeking judicial removal of the board.