A federal District Court has dismissed most counts of a suit brought by ousted Penn State University Trustee Barry J. Fenchak against the University in their long-running dispute over Fenchak’s rights and duties as a member of the Board of Trustees.  The Court has dismissed claims of defamation, breach of fiduciary duty, and violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution. It has refused to dismiss at this point, however, a claim for violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The Pennsylvania Whistleblower Law does not protect a chief financial officer who complained that one of his staff had “plugged” items in financial records to make accounts balance from an adverse summary judgment, but did protect him from complaints about violations of internal ethics policies, a federal District Court in Pennsylvania has ruled.

“A more frivolous counterclaim cannot be imagined.  Counsel for [the defendant] are ordered to show cause why they — attorneys licensed to practice in this court — should not be sanctioned for wasting this Court’s time and the [plaintiff’s] resources by asserting such a claim.”

Thus concluded the federal District Court in Manhattan when the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals sued its former CFO for breach of fiduciary duty and the CFO counterclaimed for breach of the confidentiality provisions in the parties’ mediation agreements.

The federal District Court in Oregon (Mustafa T. Kasubhai) has enjoined the Department of Health and Human Services from seeking to enforce Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Declaration that the provision of gender-affirming care fails “to meet professional[sic] recognized standards of health care” and that any organization providing such services can be terminated from the federal Medicaid and Medicare programs.

The Pennsylvania nonprofit corporation seeking approval to run a safe injection site for users of illegal drugs in Philadelphia has been denied a request to add its president’s personal claim for religious liberty to the litigation.  The District Court called the request a “ploy” that had already been rejected by the Court of Appeals.

An individual who attended a weekend retreat at Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth in Florida consumed ayahuasca, a regulated hallucinogenic, as part of the Church’s sacraments in 2018 and became ill and died a short time later at the hospital. His personal representative sued the Church and its pastor and was awarded a $15 million judgment, of which $9 million is owed by the pastor.

The federal District Court in Northern California (Edward J. Davila) has ordered Russell Vought, the Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to request funding for the Bureau from the Federal Reserve Bank, finding that his effort to “shut down” the agency is an arbitrary and capricious violation of the Administrative Procedures Act.