Who gets the income from a Foundation when one of its designated beneficiaries is sold to a for-profit organization?  Even the most carefully drafted documents can be deemed ambiguous and ripe for later litigation.

The Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Act provides the exclusive remedy for a worker injured on the job, even where the worker claims that the injury was caused by the intentional misconduct of the employer, the Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled. In reaching its conclusion, the Court has struggled with some of its own prior rulings and different rulings in different states.

The difficult conflict between a church seeking to use a controlled substance in its religious ceremonies and the government’s interest in restricting such use has been raised again in an appeal by the Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s denial of permission.  The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the Church should have appealed directly to the Court of Appeals and not to a trial level district court in Florida.

The Supreme Court of Minnesota has affirmed two lower court decisions holding that a series of incidents involving a breach of trust can cumulatively justify removal of the trustee for “significant” breach of trust, even though some of the breaches alone might not justify removal.  It has affirmed the removal of one of the trustees of the Otto Bremer Trust, a $2 billion private foundation located in St. Paul, under the state’s version of the Uniform Trust Code.

An appellate court in Louisiana has held that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has appropriately followed its own internal rules in suspending a “lifetime” member for five years for conduct “inimical to the best interests” of the Association. The Court upheld the action to suspend the rights of Ernest L. Johnson, a former member of the national board of directors.

A New Mexico trial court has authority to require a party to litigation to make a contribution to charity as part of an order imposing civil sanctions on the party for contempt of court.  The state’s Court of Appeals has affirmed a trial court order requiring a party to make a $50,000 contribution to charity to purge his civil contempt violation.