The Tax Court has denied a $23 million charitable contribution deduction for donation of an historic façade easement on a building that is not listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has not been certified by the Secretary of Interior as contributing importantly to the historic character of an historic district.

The Court of Appeals in North Carolina has overruled a trial court and held that the trial court has jurisdiction to resolve a dispute over who owns the church property when a local church asks to disaffiliate from the national denomination.  The trial court had declined to consider the case on the ground that the issue was an ecclesiastical matter from which a civil court was required to abstain.

A man who applied for a job as a research project coordinator at the University of Maryland School of Medicine did not suffer from gender bias when he was passed over for the position and the School hired a woman for a lower paying and less technical job as a clinic coordinator for which he did not apply, the Appellate Court of Maryland has affirmed. 

An appellate court in Oregon has reversed a trial court decision holding that complaints of wrongdoing disclosed to the managers doing wrong are not protected by the state’s whistleblower protection statute.   A trial court had held that an employee of a nonprofit irrigation district who had expressed concerns about mismanagement and violation of board policies and other rules and regulations to her managers had not made a proper “disclosure” to obtain protection of the law.  The Court of Appeals of Oregon has reversed.

The Executive Finance Officer of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit health clinic has apparent authority to bind the clinic to the terms of a “Revenue Purchase Agreement” with a business funding group that paid the clinic for accounts receivable to be collected in the future.  A federal District Court in Philadelphia has denied the clinic’s request for a preliminary injunction to prevent the business funding group from executing on its agreement with the clinic.

A member of a local Masonic Lodge has no standing to bring a suit to contest the process of dissolution and ownership of its funds, the Supreme Court of Montana has ruled.  It has denied a series of standing claims brought by the individual member, saying that the member was precluded from suing under the governing documents of the state’s Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons.

Although not cited very often, the “rule of lenity” is occasionally used by a court as a last resort to decide a case when it cannot determine the legislative intent of a statute.  Under the rule, if the court cannot ascertain the intent of the Legislature using all the ordinary rules of statutory construction, “the defendant is entitled to any rational doubt.”