Background: The Alabama Public Service Commission regulates utility rates and requires those rates to remain reasonable and just to both utilities and the public. Alabama Power recovers defined energy costs through Rate Energy Cost Recovery, commonly called Rate ECR. The mechanism uses a two-part formula: one component recovers current energy costs, while another accounts for earlier…
Held: The Supreme Court affirmed. Alabama Code § 37-1-87 permits an affected person or organization to intervene in a proceeding before the Commission, but it does not create an all-purpose right to join every item of Commission business. Reading the governing provisions together, the Court identified two pertinent categories: a utility-initiated proceeding to establish or change a rate or service regulation…
Background: Before the October 30, 2018 election for head of the Kafr Manda Local Council, Tawfiq Abd al-Halim worked on behalf of his associate, Mu'anes Abd al-Halim, who was running for council head. Prosecutors alleged that Abd al-Halim gave election bribes to two brothers eligible to vote and made them swear that they would vote for…
Held: Justice Khaled Kabub denied leave to appeal. The Court reiterated that a third-instance criminal appeal is available only in exceptional cases presenting a legal question of general importance or a concern of a miscarriage of justice or serious injustice. Abd al-Halim's case met neither standard.
Background: Surveillance footage showed Mardeontae Lee pouring gasoline on grass around Annie Grace’s occupied home and later lighting a paper bag. Lee told police that another person had been paid to burn the house in retaliation for a killing committed by Grace’s son. Lee said he participated because he feared for his life but intended only…
Held: The court held that the aggravated-arson conviction lacked sufficient evidence. Reading Louisiana’s aggravated-arson statute together with the fire-marshal statutes and applying the rule of lenity, the majority concluded that a “movable” means a movable facility or enclosure in which at least 50 people may assemble. A paper bag did not qualify, and the State presented no evidence that Lee set…
Background: Hidden Valley Corporation granted BellSouth Mobility and its successors an easement to use part of an adjoining property for telecommunications purposes. The easement agreement provided that, if either party filed suit to enforce the agreement, the prevailing party could recover reasonable attorney’s fees and court costs. After later transfers, RJ’s International Trading, LLC owned the…
Held: The Florida Supreme Court answered the certified question in the negative. A covenant runs with the land under Florida law only if the original parties intended to bind successors, the successors had notice, and the covenant touches and concerns the land. Addressing the dispositive third element, the court held that an obligation touches and concerns land when it is sufficiently…
Background: MEX Group Worldwide Limited alleges that its former general counsel, Adam Duthie, breached undertakings contained in a July 2024 consent order. The undertakings restricted his disclosure and use of confidential information and his communications with defendants in specified proceedings involving the MultiBank Group. MEX’s contempt application alleges that Duthie supplied a skeleton argument to a…
Held: Mr Justice Cavanagh refused to adjourn or split the contempt hearing. He held that its relevant issues were comparatively narrow: the meaning and scope of the undertakings, whether Duthie breached them, and whether the application was hopeless or concerned only a technical breach such that it might constitute an abuse of process. MEX’s or its chairman’s subjective motive and conduct…
Background: K & L Crystal Beach, LLC, and Robert E. Bohman owned two units at the Crystal Beach Condominiums in McCall, Idaho. In 2020, the condominium association recorded an amended declaration that changed unit owners’ common-area ownership percentages while retaining the prior assessment percentages. The association also issued rental and moorage rules. K&L alleged that the…
Held: The Idaho Supreme Court affirmed dismissal of the declaratory-relief, title, encroachment, and contract claims. Although the court held that the Condominium Property Act’s phrase “unless otherwise provided” refers to limitations in a condominium declaration rather than other statutes, it concluded that the Nonprofit Corporation Act nevertheless controls challenges asserting that a nonprofit condominium association acted beyond its authority. Those ultra…
Background: A Douglas County jury convicted Tyrice J. Coleman of first degree murder and use of a firearm to commit a felony for the November 2023 shooting death of 17-year-old Messiah Holley in an Omaha park. The State presented testimony from Ronald Harlan, who said he saw Coleman shoot Holley during an attack by a group…
Held: The Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed. It held that the district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting the cellphone video and the video technician’s comparison testimony. Although the technician could not definitively identify the gun in the video as the murder weapon, the similarities and absence of observed dissimilarities gave the evidence some probative value, and any uncertainty went…
Background: In August 2024, Gary VanderWerf deposited $11,500 into a Bitcoin Depot ATM and directed the corresponding bitcoin to a wallet controlled by unidentified fraudsters, despite warnings against sending cryptocurrency to a wallet he did not control. Police seized the cash from the ATM during their investigation, but the bitcoin was never recovered and the investigation…
Held: The Iowa Supreme Court reversed, holding that § 533C.1004 did not apply to the 2024 transaction. Applying the statutory presumption that legislation operates prospectively unless expressly made retrospective, the court concluded that requiring Bitcoin Depot to refund a pre-enactment transaction would impose a new legal consequence on prior conduct. The statute contained no express retroactivity provision, and its specified applicability…
Background: Hawaiʻi’s nine-member Elections Commission had been without a chairperson since June 30, 2026. Commissioners Ralph Cushnie and Tamara McKay sought to convene a meeting, but the Office of Elections refused to provide staff support or the Commission’s meeting-notice mailing list. The Office initially maintained that support required a request from a chairperson or a majority…
Held: The court granted the writ. It held that when the Elections Commission has no chairperson and no way to set a meeting, a single commissioner may request the staff support needed to notice and hold an organizational meeting, and the Office of Elections must provide it. That statutory duty is mandatory and ministerial, and the Office may not condition its…
Background: Win Win Win, LLC, doing business as Concord Casino (WWW), held New Hampshire charitable-gaming licenses. After audits raised concerns about its financial documentation and its use of a federal Economic Injury Disaster Loan, the New Hampshire Lottery and Gaming Commission and Attorney General found WWW and its owner, Anthony Sanborn, unsuitable to remain involved in…
Held: The court affirmed. It first held that WWW and Sanborn had standing under RSA chapter 541 to challenge the licensing denial. WWW was a license applicant directly affected by the denial, and Sanborn suffered a direct financial injury because the denial prevented the contingent sale from closing.
Background: Rita and Michael Nicolaou owned a residual, landlocked lot used for their greyhounds after the Minister compulsorily acquired adjoining land for a school development. The acquisition was accompanied by a temporary right of carriageway and services easement, while alternative road access was being negotiated with the local council.
Held: Slattery J granted the plaintiffs leave under r 12.1(1)(b) of the Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 2005 (NSW) to discontinue the remaining claims without a prohibition on substantially similar future proceedings. The Court held that the discretion to grant leave was unconfined and that, on these facts, the proposed bar was not justified.
Background: Jermel Laray Goines pleaded guilty in 2019 to aggravated domestic battery and criminal threat while on probation for earlier felonies. The district court imposed a 36-month prison sentence in the 2019 case, suspended it, and placed Goines on probation for 24 months.
Held: The Kansas Supreme Court held that K.S.A. 22-3716(c)(6) limits the total period of any probation-violation sanction imposed under subsection (c)(1) to the time remaining on the underlying prison sentence. Because the underlying sentence in Goines’ 2019 case was 36 months, the sanction imposed in February 2020—including the delayed reinstatement of probation—had to end by February 2023 unless lawfully extended.