A private nonprofit agency may refuse to hire a new employee who has recently filed for bankruptcy, despite a provision in the Bankruptcy Code stating that no private employer may discriminate against an individual “with respect to employment” because of a bankruptcy, a federal District Court in Pennsylvania has held. It has based its decision on a prior case in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals that had enunciated the rule.
An appellate court in Mississippi has remanded the appeal of a woman who claimed she was improperly ousted as president of a high school alumni association. The Court said that the record did not contain verified documents on which it could make a decision.
The “suspicious timing” of an employee’s termination 48 days after she filed a workers’ compensation claim is not “in and of itself” sufficient to preclude a summary judgment for the employer, an appellate court in Illinois has held. It has affirmed a trial court’s dismissal of a claim for retaliatory discharge brought by the former employee.
A criminal defendant convicted of aggravated identity theft has lost an attack on a two-level enhancement of his sentence because he pretended to act on behalf of a fake charity.
Jonathan Webster pleaded guilty to stealing hundreds of individual identities with false offers of lending a helping hand. He had created websites for fake charities and invited recently unemployed people to apply for financial aid. The Court imposed a 132-month sentence.
A religious association that falsely purported to be a Roman Catholic Benedictine monastery has been ordered to pay more than $71,000 in punitive damages to a couple who made substantial payments to the association on the basis of the misrepresentation. An appellate court in Connecticut has affirmed a trial court decision that also ordered the association to pay more than $207,000 in compensatory damages. (Wagner v.
When Sister George Marie Attea, a long-time professed nun of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Buffalo, NY, died in 2014, she left a will and a probate estate of nearly $2 million, to be divided among her brothers, the husband of her deceased sister, the Congregation, and a number of Catholic charities.
