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. 

The Rutherford Wrestling Club in Murfreesboro Tennessee has no legal interest in a building or equipment it helped fund on public school property.  A state trial court and appellate court have denied the Club access when it refused to sign a third party user agreement with the County.

An attorney who served on the board of directors and then as Executive Director of a residential school for children with autism is not disqualified from representing a family claiming mistreatment of their child more than 5 years after the lawyer left the school.  A federal District Court in California has ruled that there is no “substantial relationship” between his role with the school and the issues of the current litigation.  (

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a decision granting summary judgment against a donor who claimed he was defrauded into making a gift to help find the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s plane.  The Court agreed that there was no misrepresentation of fact.

An appellate court in New York has affirmed an Unemployment Insurance Appeal Board determination that instructors at a nonprofit performing arts school are employees for whom the school must make payments for unemployment compensation insurance.  Although it said that the evidence would also support a contrary determination, it affirmed the Board on the basis of substantial evidence to justify the decision.