Jan 23, 2017
With the change of the calendar to a new year, there are some changes in the law which might be of interest to you and even impact your estate plan. For example:
Although our schools do not equip us to distinguish between the almost 1500 different bugs, lizards, birds, rodents, fish, etc. that the government labels “endangered”, it is now being argued that to take or kill even one of these creatures should be criminal regardless of how innocent or inadvertent the act. Even an endangered splat on your car’s windshield might render you a criminal and send you to jail.
Jan 20, 2017
Testimony before grand juries is serious. It generally results in the issuance of felony charges and a warrant authorizing the arrest of the person charged. Testifying falsely before a grand jury so that an innocent person is indicted and arrested can really ruin the victim’s day. However, a recent 6th Circuit Court case eloquently demonstrates that you can’t recover damages for malicious prosecution or for violation of your civil rights under 42 U.S.C. §1983 … Read more
Jan 10, 2017
Most of us wouldn’t think that hang gliders require the same regulation through rules and laws as airplanes and helicopters. Most of us probably wouldn’t think that wheelchairs, even if motorized, should logically be governed by the plethora of traffic laws and rules applied to cars, buses and trucks driving down our streets and highways. After all, a wheelchair enables someone who can’t walk to achieve a personal mobility equivalent to walking. A wheelchair does … Read more
Jan 6, 2017
In a long-awaited decision, the Oregon Supreme Court has struck down Medicaid repayment rules issued by the Department of Human Services in 2008. The court ruled that DHS did not have the legal authority to issue rules which would allow it to recover Medicaid payments from assets a Medicaid recipient transferred to his or her spouse up to five years prior to applying for Medicaid. The decision upholds a 2014 ruling from a lower court … Read more
A recent Washington case illustrates why it’s prudent to specify how and where you want your body disposed of after death if you really want to rest in peace ever after.
Kyril Faenov left a wife and two young children when he committed suicide. His widow and her father arranged and paid for the burial of his remains in a Seattle cemetery. However, Kyril had forgotten to leave written instructions concerning his place of burial … Read more
Dec 21, 2016
In a recent case the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals held that a wife who had apparently discovered her husband’s infidelity by intercepting his emails to and from various women could be liable for violating the federal Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act. 18 U.S.C. §2520. In his concurring opinion, Judge Richard Posner questioned whether the law should protect the husband’s privacy interest in concealing his infidelities from his wife.
As Judge Posner wrote: “I … Read more
Dec 20, 2016
In a recent act of performance art, illustrating that city and county governments may truly be the sewers of American politics, King County Washington is now sending its employees out digging through residential garbage in the early morning hours when they’re least likely to be discovered. Residents have found men outside their homes at 5:30 in the morning going through their garbage with flashlights. The highly-paid King County public servants engaged in this dumpster diving … Read more
Congress has just enacted legislation that allows disabled beneficiaries of means tested programs such as Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) to establish their own special needs trusts. Until now, such trusts had to be established by persons other than the disabled individual even when the trust’s funding source was the disabled individual’s own assets. The new law, known as the Special Needs Trust Fairness Act, changes that and allows such trusts to be established … Read more
Dec 12, 2016
The City of Portland has just enacted an ordinance imposing a 10% surcharge to the annual city business license tax paid by publicly traded corporations whose CEOs earn compensation when compared with the median worker pay is a ratio of 100:1 or more. The surcharge increases to an additional 25% of the city business tax if the ratio of CEO compensation to median worker compensation is 250:1 or greater.
The ordinance rationalizes the surcharge as … Read more
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