Background: The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed a civil-contempt order requiring a former husband to take the steps needed to make the parties’ joint 2021 federal tax return operative and to bear the resulting interest and penalties. The dispute grew out of Guy Morrison III and Tami Hinson-Morrison’s divorce. Before the divorce action, Morrison prepaid $140,000 to…
Held: Chief Justice Kate M. Boomgaarden, writing for a unanimous court, rejected the timing and clarity arguments. The February 2023 allocation order already required a joint 2021 return before the joint and amended separate returns were filed. The decree’s incorporated decision letter repeated that command. Civil contempt required clear and convincing evidence of an effective order, knowledge, and willful disobedience, with…
Background: The Nevada Supreme Court has upheld a prosecutor’s statutory power to withhold consent when a criminal defendant asks to waive a jury. In a published opinion addressing a Nevada separation-of-powers challenge for the first time, the court held that NRS 175.011(1) does not give the executive branch an unconstitutional veto over a judicial function. The…
Held: Writing for a unanimous three-justice panel, Justice Lee concluded that NRS 175.011(1) respects Nevada’s constitutional allocation of power. The court relied on its earlier decisions recognizing that the jury-trial guarantee protects the public and the State as well as the accused. A defendant has a constitutional right to an impartial jury, but that guarantee does not create an inverse right…
Background: LatArsha L. Sanders was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder for the 2018 stabbing deaths of her two young sons in Brockton. There was no dispute that Sanders killed the children. The contested question at her Superior Court trial was criminal responsibility: whether, because of a mental disease or defect, she lacked substantial capacity…
Held: Writing for a unanimous five-justice panel, Justice Gaziano held that the records were not barred by Massachusetts's common-law rule governing the bases of expert testimony. That rule limits an expert's ability to relay otherwise inadmissible facts on direct examination, but it does not prevent a party from first admitting independently admissible evidence and then asking the expert about it. General…
Background: Ramona Ricapor-Hall began smoking at age twelve in 1953 and continued for sixty-six years. After she was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2019, she sued Philip Morris USA Inc. and other tobacco manufacturers and vendors. She alleged that Philip Morris’s cigarettes caused her cancer and that the company participated in a decades-long conspiracy to conceal…
Held: The Supreme Court of Hawaiʻi held that a plaintiff’s negligence does not reduce damages for an intentional tort. HRS § 663-31 applies only to negligence actions, and Hawaiʻi common law prevents an intentional wrongdoer from benefiting from the victim’s lack of reasonable care. Because the jury returned a single $6 million general-damages award covering negligence, strict-liability, and intentional conspiracy claims…
Background: The respondents won a 2023 Israel Land Authority tender to operate the Asheret North quarry, which had operated under license for approximately three decades. Their 2025 application for a business license was denied because six structures at the quarry—offices, employee facilities, workshops, and sheds totaling about 250 square meters—lacked lawful building permits. After an earlier…
Held: Justice Alex Stein denied the stay application without deciding the appeal’s merits. Although the appeal raised substantial questions—including the proper interpretation of section 8A1(a) and whether the District Court should have ordered issuance of a license rather than remanding the matter—the balance of convenience favored the quarry operators. A stay would cause them substantial economic harm and would undermine the…
Background: Jayneel Ravindra Jade responded to an adult escort advertisement posted by officers conducting a child-sex-trafficking reverse sting. The advertisement listed the woman as 20. During text messages, the decoy said she was 15; Jade replied, “Got to be 16,” and later suggested role-playing if she were older than 15. After an unrecorded telephone call, the…
Held: The Michigan Supreme Court held that factual findings made after an entrapment hearing are reviewed for clear error, but the ultimate determination whether entrapment occurred—and other underlying legal questions—are reviewed de novo. The Court also clarified Michigan’s two-prong modified objective test: entrapment exists if police unlawfully induce the offense or engage in conduct so reprehensible that it cannot be tolerated.…
Background: Four law firms jointly represented Wye Oak Technology, Inc. in litigation that initially produced a federal judgment exceeding $120 million against Iraq and its Ministry of Defense. The firms signed an Agreement Concerning Attorneys’ Fees under which Wye Oak would pay a cumulative contingency fee of 46% of its recovery. The agreement contained a JAMS…
Held: The D.C. Court of Appeals affirmed. It held that QRG failed to establish fraudulent inducement because it did not identify a false representation directed at the arbitration agreement. The alleged concealment of an earlier fee-splitting understanding did not establish fraud in the making of the arbitration clause itself. QRG also failed to prove duress because the alleged threats to withhold…
Background: Elizabeth Cleveland alleged that she had lived in a home on Harrison County property since the 1980s and had acquired ownership through more than twenty years of adverse possession. After the property was sold to Mississippi for unpaid taxes in 2017 and later conveyed to Jermille Johnson through forfeited-tax-land patents, Cleveland sued to quiet title…
Held: The Mississippi Supreme Court held that Cleveland had standing to challenge the tax sale. Taking her well-pleaded allegations as true at the standing stage, her simultaneous adverse-possession claim supplied a sufficient interest because Mississippi law provides that qualifying possession vests title by operation of law after ten years. The alleged loss of the home where she had lived for decades…
Background: The Nursing & Midwifery Council applied under Article 31(8) of the Nursing and Midwifery Order 2001 for a six-month extension of an interim conditions of practice order imposed on registered nurse Moras Masih. The restrictions derived from an order imposed in December 2022 and concerned allegations of deficient clinical practice and misconduct arising between 2019…
Held: Mr Justice Griffiths held that the NMC had breached the mandatory review requirements in Articles 31(6) and 31(11). It failed to conduct a review when the November 2025 dismissal of numerous charges produced new evidence relevant to the order, and it did not review the High Court’s 9 December 2025 extension within six months. Those breaches did not, however, automatically…
Background: Arynn Hauk and Brandon Wuesthoff’s parenting plan established four phases that progressively increased Wuesthoff’s residential time with their daughter, T.W. The final phase, beginning with kindergarten, provided an equal division of overnights. Nearly two years after the plan was entered, while the parties were in phase three, Hauk gave notice that she intended to relocate…
Held: The Washington Supreme Court reversed. It held that, when a parenting plan contains phased residential schedules, courts determine whether the relocation presumption applies by calculating residential time under the phase in effect when the relocating parent serves notice of intent to relocate. Courts may not include residential time assigned in future phases that have not yet taken effect.
Background: Smokey Hollow, LLC sought approval to build an 82-lot residential subdivision on 66 acres in unincorporated Sussex County. Because the property’s General Residential zoning permitted the development as of right, Smokey Hollow did not need rezoning, but it did need major-subdivision approval from the Sussex County Planning & Zoning Commission.
Held: The Delaware Supreme Court declined both parties’ proposed tests for evaluating subdivision conditions. It held that reasonableness depends on the facts of each application. Although a planning commission cannot deny a code-compliant subdivision outright, it may impose conditions based on non-code considerations if each condition is rationally related to a potential land-use impact, serves the public interest, and is supported…
Background: J.S. brought separate complaints under the Equal Status Acts alleging that Donegal County Council and the Department of Social Protection discriminated against him on gender grounds. He claimed that the Council failed to provide him with social housing support, and that the Department denied him one-parent family payment, while allegedly providing those supports to his…
Held: Ms. Justice Egan dismissed both appeals. J.S. had not identified an error of law in the Circuit Court’s decisions and was effectively seeking a fresh hearing of matters already decided. The findings that the Council applied the same documentation requirements to all applicants, and that J.S. had not established more favourable treatment of a female comparator, were supported by the…