Background: Hailey Nicole Keller (Mother) and Corey Phillip Cruz (Father) had four children together, three of whom are the subjects of this consolidated appeal. Beginning in May 2022, police found the middle child—wearing only a diaper—wandering the streets of Rawlins. The Wyoming Department of Family Services (DFS) found the parents neglectful, created a safety plan, and…
Held: Affirmed. The Wyoming Supreme Court consolidated the appeals and affirmed on all issues. Termination of parental rights is subject to strict scrutiny and must be proven by clear and convincing evidence; on appeal, the Court examines the record in the light most favorable to the prevailing party and applies a highly deferential standard.
Background: When Jose Aguon Pangelinan died in January 2022, he left a will naming his nephew, Gregory P. Schacher, as executor of an estate that included at least three parcels of Guam real property — two of which were ancestral lands returned to Pangelinan under the Guam Ancestral Lands Act of 1999, 21 GCA ch. 80.…
Held: Reversed and remanded with instructions to appoint Schacher as executor. Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Maraman held that the probate court abused its discretion by applying the wrong legal standard — specifically, by treating the absence of a law license as statutory incompetency.
Background: When a Maryland court finds a criminal defendant incompetent to stand trial and dangerous to self or others ("IST"), it must commit the defendant to a designated health care facility administered by the Maryland Department of Health for competency restoration treatment. Following a 2017 ruling in Powell v. Maryland Dep't of Health that exposed chronic,…
Held: Writing for the majority (Justice Biran, joined by Watts, Booth, Eaves, Killough, and Hotten, JJ.), the Court held that CP § 3-106(c)(4) authorizes courts to impose monetary sanctions each day the Department fails to manage its waiting list so as to admit the defendant before the court as soon as possible after the eleventh business day following receipt of the…
Background: In early 2020, a police welfare check at a trailer in Wayne County, Michigan revealed six-year-old MA with thick scarring and ligature marks on his wrists and ankles, facial bruising, and swelling. MA's mother, Gwendolyn Alexander, and her partner Errown Scott were arrested. Alexander admitted to police that she had tied MA up with a…
Held: In a unanimous opinion by Chief Justice Cavanagh, the Michigan Supreme Court held that Dr. Nazer's medical torture diagnosis testimony was improper on three independent grounds. First, it was unhelpful to the jury under MRE 702 because it did not explain the nature, extent, or timing of MA's physical injuries in a way that would assist the jury in determining…
Background: Allied Irish Banks commenced debt proceedings in February 2015 against Matthew Wales and others to recover €1,024,375.49 advanced on loans between 2005 and 2013, secured by mortgage over Suite 26, a commercial property in Dublin. Parallel possession proceedings sought recovery of the property itself. In 2019, the loans transferred to Everyday Finance DAC, which was…
Held: Justice Kennedy dismissed Wales's applications under Order 122, rule 11 of the Rules of the Superior Courts to dismiss the proceedings for want of prosecution. Applying the Supreme Court's reformulated test in Kirwan v Connors [2025] IESC 21, Kennedy held that the proceedings did not warrant dismissal despite the substantial delays involved. The court found that the proceedings were not…
Background: Katherine Anne Proctor, then an Assistant Montana Attorney General, was convicted of felony Assault on a Minor after her four-month-old daughter P.P. arrived at a Helena emergency room on September 29, 2021, in critical condition. Medical personnel found P.P. unresponsive, seizing, and suffering from a massive anoxic brain injury, subdural hemorrhages, retinal hemorrhages, cervical ligamentous…
Held: The Montana Supreme Court affirmed the conviction on all four issues. On the central question of SBS/AHT expert testimony, the court rejected Proctor's reliance on State v. Nieves, in which New Jersey courts excluded SBS/AHT evidence because it failed the Frye "general acceptance" standard across all relevant scientific disciplines, including biomechanics. The Montana court noted that Montana abandoned the Frye…
Background: Three software companies—Ideasoft Solutions LLC (Ukraine), Ideasoft Grupp OÜ (Estonia), and their CEO Andrii Lazorenko—sued Peter Kolomiets, their former Chief Business Development Officer, for harassment, defamation, and causing loss by unlawful means. In April 2025, a majority stake in the companies was being sold to UAE-based investors. Kolomiets, who had exited the company in early…
Held: Justice Linden comprehensively set out the legal framework governing strike-out applications and summary judgment applications, establishing that courts must focus on the pleaded case and ask whether it is hopeless or bound to fail. The court rejected the defendant's argument that the claimants' application should be heard first, agreeing with the defendant that addressing the threshold question of which claims…
Background: Viktoria Devai and John Burk are the parents of a child born in January 2020. Their relationship was marked by conflict from the outset: Devai obtained a temporary civil protection order against Burk in Texas before the child was born, and after relocating to Idaho she obtained another ex parte order in 2020. The parties…
Held: The Idaho Supreme Court affirmed the magistrate court's judgment in full. Writing for the court, Justice Meyer held that substantial and competent evidence supported the magistrate court's findings that no domestic violence, as defined by Idaho Code section 39-6303(1), had occurred and that Burk had not abused the child. The court emphasized that three separate IDHW investigations, the court-appointed parenting…
Background: Shree Arihant Motel, Inc. owned the Colonial Corner shopping center in Hopewell, Virginia, a commercial property that had sat vacant after two failed redevelopment attempts in 2008 and 2014. Beginning in 2019, City officials declared the property blighted and notified Shree Arihant that the buildings were dilapidated, unsafe, and a danger to public health and…
Held: The Supreme Court of Virginia reversed the circuit court and held that the City is entitled to sovereign immunity from all claims except the takings claim. Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Chafin explained that municipal sovereign immunity turns on the nature of the function the city was performing when liability arose—not on whether the city complied with procedural requirements.…
Background: In 2010, Stephen Carman pleaded guilty to nine counts of dealing in child pornography under 11 Del. C. § 1109(4). The Superior Court sentenced him to twenty-five years on each count, suspended after two years, resulting in a total of eighteen years before suspension. Upon his release from prison in August 2024, probation officers secured…
Held: The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the Superior Court's judgment in full. The court held that Officer Vorous's testimony was properly admitted. While hearsay is generally admissible at VOP hearings, probation cannot be revoked solely on testimony from a witness with no firsthand knowledge of the alleged violations. Here, Officer Vorous had direct personal knowledge of many of the critical events:…
Background: On August 12, 2014, Eva Pena was injured while boarding a Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) bus at Kennedy Plaza in Providence. She alleged that the bus driver negligently closed the doors on her as she stepped aboard, causing her to fall and sustain severe injuries, including a leg wound and lasting mobility impairments.…
Held: The Rhode Island Supreme Court reversed the denial of the new trial motion and remanded for a new trial, holding that the trial justice abused her discretion in admitting Millard's testimony and report recounting what Pena allegedly said through the unidentified Spanish interpreter. Applying its own century-old precedents in State v. Epstein (1903) and State v. Terline (1902), the Court…
Background: In the 1990s, two agricultural settlements—Mishmar Eilon and Gnot—each initiated residential expansion plans, approved in 2000 and 2009 respectively, which would convert agricultural land within their territory into residential plots. Absent progress for over a decade, both cooperatives abandoned these expansion plans in 2016 and 2020, electing instead to pursue alternative development. In April 2025,…
Held: Justice Gila Kanfi-Steinitz reversed, granting the cooperatives' requests for preliminary injunctions. The court held that at this preliminary stage, the substantive issues were too complex and unresolved to support a decision permitting the ILA to change the status quo. Central questions remained undetermined: the cooperative members' legal status in the land (whether permissible occupants or long-term lessees with property rights);…