Lead Stories

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.

A decedent’s estate properly paid a $246,000 claim to a Jewish synagogue when the Temple relied on the unsigned pledge to encourage others to participate in its campaign for a new building and endowment, the Supreme Court of Alabama has ruled.  The fact that one of the co-executors was a member of the Temple and on one of its committees did not invalidate the payment.  (Ruttenberg v. Friedman, No. 1090600, 5/11/12.)

The Boy Scouts of America has recently lost two efforts to keep confidential its internal records of volunteers accused of sexual abuse. Several decades of records were, or could be, used to support damage claims by men seeking to impose liability on the Scouts for abuse.

The Oregon Supreme Court has affirmed a trial court decision to open redacted files to the media upon the conclusion of a case in which a jury returned a verdict against the Scouts for $1.4 million in compensatory damages and $18 million in punitives.