The California anti-SLAPP statute “has failed miserably,” says a California Court of Appeal in dismissing a third appeal involving legal fees awarded in litigation over the direction of the Newport Aquatic Center in Newport Beach.

When the Free Speech Foundation, doing business as America’s Frontline Doctors (“AFLDS”), and its Chairman of the Board filed suit in federal court alleging that its founder was going rogue and interfering with its activities, they were required to prove that the “citizenship” of all of the defendants was different from the citizenship of all of the plaintiffs in order to obtain “diversity jurisdiction” to have a federal court to hear the case.

The Attorney General of New York has permanently barred the former CEO of the Foundation for Jewish Philanthropies in the Buffalo area from serving in a fiduciary capacity for any charity active in New York state after finding that the CEO misused approximately $3.1 million in donor advised and other funds held by the organization.

How many chances should a court give a nonprofit corporation to obtain an attorney before dismissing its case for lack of counsel as required by state law?

Apparently five specific urgings over more than three months is enough. A Court of Appeals in Indiana has affirmed a trial court dismissal, without further leave to comply, against a Fort Wayne nonprofit that failed to obtain an attorney to represent it in contesting a City order to demolish its vacant and deteriorating building.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment severely circumscribes the role that civil courts may play in resolving church property disputes and that religious bodies should decide for themselves, without state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine.  If a church is hierarchical, a civil court should defer to the final authority within its hierarchy, according to the rule.

A life-long collector and dealer of African art, who worked for several years as the director of African art for the Sotheby’s auction firm, has been denied a charitable contribution deduction for a gift of art that was not substantiated by a qualified appraisal and not excused by “reasonable cause and not willful neglect.”