Background: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that MAG Mutual Insurance Company had to provide regulatory-defense coverage to Dr. William O'Connor in a medical-license proceeding because one allegation in the underlying complaint potentially concerned a professional service. The ruling vacates a Superior Court judgment for the insurer and reinforces the breadth of Massachusetts duty-to-defend principles: a…
Held: Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Wendlandt treated the regulatory-defense provision like a conventional duty-to-defend clause because both require a coverage decision before the merits of the underlying allegations are resolved. Under Massachusetts law, allegations need only be reasonably susceptible of an interpretation that roughly sketches a covered claim. Uncertainty is resolved for the insured, and the duty arises from…
Background: The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed the denial of Rene Irisrose Daniels’s motion for a new trial after her second-degree murder conviction, holding that she could not show prejudice from trial counsel’s alleged errors. Daniels was convicted for the death of Emiliano “Chico” Morales III, whom she struck with her SUV after an argument near a…
Held: District Judge Cooley, sitting by designation and writing for the court, treated prejudice as dispositive under Strickland v. Washington. A defendant claiming ineffective assistance must show both deficient performance and a reasonable probability that, without counsel’s error, the result would have been different. A court may reject the claim on prejudice alone. The Supreme Court therefore assumed for purposes of…
Background: A group of people who allegedly worked for Greene County sued the Greene County Commission in 2020, claiming that conditions in a county courthouse injured them. Their tort complaint alleged negligence, outrage, trespass, and nuisance arising from rodent infestations and faulty air-conditioning and roofing systems. The Association of County Commissions of Alabama Liability Self-Insurance Fund…
Held: The Alabama Supreme Court granted the petition and issued the writ, but drew a careful line between defense and indemnity. Justice Bryan explained that an insurer's duty to defend and its duty to indemnify are separate obligations. Relying primarily on Ex parte Alfa Mutual Insurance Co., the Court held that a declaratory action addressing the present duty to defend ordinarily…
Background: The Alaska Supreme Court held that an apartment building Norton Sound Health Corporation uses to house hospital personnel is exempt from Nome property tax. Alaska law exempts property used exclusively for hospital purposes. The building itself is residential, but the court applied Alaska's established rule that property also qualifies when its use is directly incidental…
Held: The supreme court affirmed on state-law grounds. It agreed that private residential use means the apartment is not literally used exclusively as a hospital. But exclusivity is not the end of the inquiry. Under the court's hospital-exemption precedents, ancillary property can qualify when it is directly incidental to and vitally necessary to an exempt facility. The inquiry turns on the…
Background: The petitioner and the fourth respondent married in 2006 and have a son. In November 2023, the respondent filed for divorce in the Tel Aviv–Jaffa Regional Rabbinical Court and joined the child-support dispute to that proceeding. After the Supreme Court reaffirmed in 2025 that rabbinical courts then lacked jurisdiction over child support merely joined to…
Held: The Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the petition. Amendment No. 6 expressly applies to a child-support claim joined to a divorce action that remained pending when the amendment took effect. It also provides that, when the Family Court and rabbinical court issued conflicting jurisdictional decisions, jurisdiction rests with the rabbinical court if its decision came first. Because the divorce action remained…
Background: After FedEx employees discovered approximately 19.6 pounds of marijuana in a package, law enforcement arranged a controlled delivery and saw Andrew Campbell Founds retrieve it. Detectives later found his vehicle at a residence where he rented an apartment. When Founds answered the apartment door, a detective smelled an overwhelming odor of marijuana and observed that…
Held: The Supreme Court of Maryland affirmed. Assuming without deciding that the protective sweep violated the Fourth Amendment, the Court held that the independent source doctrine permitted admission of the evidence seized under the later warrant. Adopting the objective excision approach to the second prong of the test from Murray v. United States, the Court held that a reviewing court should…
Background: Curtis Ryan Bekkum was charged with two counts of fourth-degree sexual assault under HRS § 707-733(1)(a). The complaint alleged that he knowingly subjected the complaining witness to sexual contact “by compulsion,” first by touching or grabbing her breast and later by pressing his penis against her buttocks. Although the complaint tracked the statute, it did…
Held: The Hawaiʻi Supreme Court reversed the ICA’s judgment. It clarified that a charge challenged for the first time after conviction is governed by the Motta/Wells rule: the charge is presumed valid, and the defendant must show either that it cannot reasonably be construed to allege a crime or that the omission caused prejudice. The ICA instead applied the fair-notice analysis…
Background: KDY, a disabled child with an Education, Health and Care Plan, and his mother, NGP, brought claims arising from approximately six years of interactions with schools, a local authority, an NHS trust, and community organisations. Their 247-page Particulars of Claim, supplemented by annexes and extensive supporting materials, alleged negligence, clinical negligence, breaches of statutory duty,…
Held: The High Court struck out the entire Particulars of Claim under CPR 3.4 and dismissed the claim against all defendants. The Equality Act claims belonged in the County Court and therefore could not proceed in the High Court. The court also held that the claimants could not combine separate decisions by different institutions over several years into a single continuing…
Background: Agency Settlements Pty Ltd, a newly established law firm acting for real-estate agents, offered a service under which purchasers paid property deposits directly into its solicitor trust account. Its proposed special contract condition appointed the firm as depositholder and stakeholder, while the real-estate agent never received or handled the deposit. The model was intended to…
Held: Hmelnitsky J dismissed the interlocutory-injunction application with costs. The Court did not finally determine whether Agency Settlements’ model was lawful. It held only that the company had a good arguable case that, where the vendor and purchaser agreed to the special condition, the agent did not contravene s 86 because the agent never received the deposit. The online petition also…
Background: The mother challenged a District Court order directing the resumption of access between her daughter and the child’s father. The composite order also addressed handovers, counselling, school information, telephone contact and a mental-health assessment, and discharged a protection order benefiting the mother.
Held: The High Court held that this was an exceptional case in which judicial review was available despite the mother’s unexhausted right to a rehearing before the Circuit Court. The District Court process was fundamentally flawed: it failed, so far as practicable, to ascertain and give due weight to the child’s contemporary views; blurred the boundary between expert witness and judicial…
Background: Harlee Elizabeth Borders pleaded guilty to first-degree premeditated murder, attempted premeditated murder, three counts of aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated endangering of a child. Before sentencing, she moved pro se for new counsel and to withdraw her plea, alleging that her lawyer had pressured her to plead and had inadequately communicated and shared materials with her.
Held: The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed. It held that its prior opinion and mandate mistakenly referred to reversing Borders' conviction. Because the remand required a new hearing on a presentencing motion to withdraw the plea, the conviction necessarily remained in place unless the motion succeeded. The court exercised its inherent authority to correct its own prior opinion and mandate to remove…
Background: The Florida Bar’s Probate Rules Committee submitted a fast-track report proposing amendments to Florida Probate Rules 5.025, 5.425, and 5.530 in response to chapter 2026-57, Laws of Florida, which took effect July 1, 2026.
Held: The Court adopted the Committee’s proposed amendments. Rule 5.025 now treats proceedings to enforce a personal representative’s authority under section 733.612, Florida Statutes, as adversary proceedings unless the court orders otherwise.