Background: Hideaway Hills is a residential subdivision in Black Hawk, South Dakota, built atop land with a long history of underground and surface gypsum mining. Beginning in the early 1900s, multiple private companies mined the area using the "room and pillar" method, leaving a substantial network of underground tunnels and caverns. In 1985, the South Dakota…
Held: The South Dakota Supreme Court affirmed summary judgment for the State, though on different grounds than the circuit court. The court agreed that sovereign immunity does not bar inverse condemnation claims — Article VI, § 13 of the South Dakota Constitution "essentially abrogates sovereign immunity" with respect to takings and damage claims. The circuit court's sovereign immunity rationale was therefore…
Background: Leo Investments Hong Kong Limited ("Leo Group"), a publicly traded Chinese company listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, sought indirect exposure to pre-IPO SpaceX by investing $50 million as a limited partner in Tomales Bay Capital Anduril III, L.P. (the "Fund"), a vehicle assembled by fund manager Iqbaljit Kahlon to acquire SpaceX shares from the…
Held: The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Chancery's conclusion that the business judgment rule applied and was not rebutted. The court rejected Leo Group's argument that the trial court framed the loyalty inquiry too narrowly by focusing only on Kahlon's post-November 19 conduct. Even viewing Kahlon's full course of conduct, the court found no breach of the duty of…
Background: Alexis Rustan brought this action seeking primary residential responsibility for C.F.B., the parties' minor child born in 2016, with Tyler Ball receiving only supervised parenting time. Ball, proceeding pro se from Washington state, agreed to Rustan having primary residential responsibility but sought unsupervised parenting time. C.F.B. has been diagnosed with Level 3 Autism Spectrum Disorder,…
Held: The North Dakota Supreme Court affirmed the supervised parenting structure, the Phase 1 and Phase 2 advancement conditions, the decision-making and passport provisions, the expense-sharing requirement, and the denial of Ball's post-judgment motions. The court held that the district court's findings, read together, provided a discernible factual basis for each challenged provision under the clearly erroneous standard. The medical-certification prerequisite…
Background: A registered ballot question committee called Protect Girls Sports in Maine submitted 79,692 signatures in February 2026 in support of an initiated bill titled "An Act to Designate School Sports Participation and Facilities by Sex." The Secretary of State initially certified 71,033 signatures as valid—enough to surpass the 67,682 required to place the measure before…
Held: The Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed unanimously in a per curiam opinion. The court held that the Secretary was not merely authorized but constitutionally obligated to require out-of-state circulators to consent to Maine jurisdiction in their affidavits. Because the Maine Constitution requires petition circulators to be Maine residents, and because the Secretary—as a constitutional officer bound by oath—must enforce that…
Background: Charlie May Brekke was born in November 2015 via a surrogate, Samantha, who had been diagnosed with gestational diabetes during the pregnancy. Charlie weighed eleven pounds, five ounces at birth. During delivery — a vaginal delivery — complications arose from shoulder dystocia, leaving Charlie with a permanent brachial plexus injury. Dr. Craig M. Batley, who…
Held: The Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a majority opinion authored by Chief Justice Karofsky, reversed the circuit court's grant of partial summary judgment and remanded for further proceedings on Charlie's informed consent claim. The court held that Charlie was Dr. Batley's patient under § 448.30 before her birth. Because Dr. Batley indisputably provided medical care directed at Charlie — monitoring her…
Background: Leavenworth police were investigating a series of fatal overdoses linked to fentanyl-laced counterfeit Percocet "M30" pills known as "blues." Detective La Carol Kennedy developed suspicion that a known drug associate, David Kelly, was distributing the pills out of Megan Gardner's residence on Columbia Avenue. Over roughly six weeks, Kennedy conducted surveillance on Gardner's home and…
Held: The Kansas Supreme Court reversed the suppression order, holding that the affidavit gave the issuing judge a substantial basis to find probable cause. The majority, authored by Justice Wall, concluded that both the district court and the Court of Appeals panel had committed legal error by conducting a "divide-and-conquer analysis" — evaluating each piece of evidence in isolation and discarding…
Background: Hon. Brent A. Detsoi served as a magistrate judge in McKinley County, New Mexico. Over an extended period, he dismissed as many as sixty-three criminal prosecutions by raising the question of tribal criminal jurisdiction sua sponte—often at arraignment—then informally confirming a defendant's Indian status, and summarily dismissing the case without providing notice to the parties…
Held: The Court rejected Detsoi's due process challenge to the Commission's combined investigatory and adjudicatory functions. Relying on Article VI, Section 32 of the New Mexico Constitution, decades of its own precedent—including In re Rodella (2008) and In re Castellano (1995)—and the United States Supreme Court's decision in Withrow v. Larkin (1975), the Court held that combining investigative and adjudicative functions…
Background: Christy Hamilton and her company, HMI Manufacturing, operate on three parcels of real property in Twin Falls, Idaho, adjacent to Rock Creek Canyon. The City of Twin Falls owns water and sewer lines that run beneath two of those parcels. The water line under the West Parcel was installed in 1918; the sewer line under…
Held: The Idaho Supreme Court affirmed on all issues. On the express easement for the sewer line, the court held that the Peterman 1 instrument adequately described a servient parcel that encompassed the East Parcel. Both parties' surveyors agreed at trial that the boundary description in Peterman 1 identified a parcel large enough to include the East Parcel; a subsequent parenthetical…
Background: Moshe Yaron Rozin appealed a decision of the Tel Aviv-Jaffo District Court that granted his request for disclosure of company documents under Section 198a of the Companies Law regarding Tasiot Tel Aviv 4-5 Ltd. and related entities, but declined to award costs in his favor. To proceed with his appeal, Rozin sought an exemption from…
Held: Justice Moran Yahav acknowledged that Israeli law consistently classifies decisions on disclosure requests under Section 198a of the Companies Law as "other decisions" rather than judgments, meaning appeals require permission. However, the court exercised its discretion and declined to dismiss the appeal on this threshold ground. Instead, under the Civil Procedure Rules, the court reclassified the appeal from an appeal…
Background: France's private not-for-profit healthcare and social services sector operates under multiple collective bargaining agreements (conventions collectives) that do not cover all workers uniformly. These include the CCN 51 (private hospitals and care facilities, dating to 1951), the CCN 66 (services for disabled persons, 1966), and the CCN for cancer research centers (1999). In 2005, social…
Held: The Court of Cassation partially reversed the lower court's dismissal. The court held that when social partners decide to negotiate a single collective agreement intended to replace existing agreements in a sector—even absent formal invocation of the statutory "branch merger" procedure—unions representative in those existing agreements retain the right to participate in negotiations for the replacement agreement. This right flows…
Background: Anthony L. Burries was convicted of first degree murder by a Douglas County jury for killing his girlfriend, Tina Hoult, whose body was discovered in her apartment on May 18, 2014. The evidence placed Burries at Hoult's apartment in the early morning hours of May 16, and the last text message from Hoult's phone was…
Held: The Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed the district court's denial of postconviction relief without an evidentiary hearing, finding no merit in any of Burries' assigned errors. Assuming without deciding that the third amended motion was not barred as a successive motion, the court addressed the merits and concluded that the district court properly denied relief. The court found that the overwhelming…
Background: Ms. Ermis owns residential property at 104 Coldharbour Lane, Camberwell, London. Without planning permission, a roof space was converted into a residential flat and dormer extensions were added in 2019. Ms. Ermis acquired the property in February 2023 following a divorce settlement. The London Borough of Lambeth issued an enforcement notice on 1 December 2023…
Held: Deputy High Court Judge Jonathan Moffett KC conducted a detailed review of the Inspector's decision letter and reasoning. The critical issue was whether Ms. Ermis had proven on the balance of probabilities that the flat had been in continuous residential use for at least four years immediately preceding 1 December 2023—the date on which the enforcement notice was issued. Under…