Governor signs bill for Indiana COVID-19 lawsuit shield
Indiana businesses and others now have broad protections from lawsuits by people blaming them for contracting COVID-19 under a new state law signed by Gov. Eric Holcomb.
Indiana businesses and others now have broad protections from lawsuits by people blaming them for contracting COVID-19 under a new state law signed by Gov. Eric Holcomb.
More than one-third of the proposed state funding hike for Indiana schools could go toward the state’s private school voucher program under a Republican-backed plan that could boost the program’s cost by nearly 50% over the next two years.
Tempers flared among Indiana legislators during a debate Thursday when Black lawmakers were shouted down and booed by some Republicans and two House members had to be separated in a hallway.
A longtime private practitioner in a small Evansville law firm was appointed as judge of the Vanderburgh Superior Court on Thursday. Gov. Eric Holcomb announced the appointment of the new jurist who will succeed Judge Richard G. D’Amour upon his retirement in April.
Three adults who claim they were abused as children have filed a lawsuit against their adoptive parents as well as the Indiana Department of Child Services and the department’s county director and caseworkers, claiming the state agency and its employees were the “proximate cause of the shocking abuse” that the plaintiffs suffered.
A Tennessee man charged in the July 1992 killings of an Indiana woman and her 4-year-old daughter was linked to the deaths by a new analysis of DNA collected from the mother’s body, court records show.
Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law is partnering with Purdue University to create the first agricultural economics and law program in the nation, the Indianapolis law school has announced.
The Lake County Bar Association on Thursday issued the most damning rebuke to date of a bill in the Indiana General Assembly that would alter how judges in that county and St. Joseph County are selected. The northwest Indiana county’s bar called the bill “an abomination” and “a political power play by parties not even within Lake County to take even more power away from the people of Lake County in selecting their judges.”
A court order granting a Johnson County grandmother overnight visitation with her 4-year-old grandchild lacked the required statutory findings to support it, but the Indiana Court of Appeals in a first-of-its-kind ruling involving a child’s guardians found enough evidence to let the order stand while remanding for more conclusive findings.
Members of the state’s highest court last week turned away nine cases on petition for transfer but agreed to hear arguments in three cases, including disputes over the legality of teacher contracts and two media companies’ litigation over the use of consumer data.
The president of Newfields resigned from his position Wednesday amid mounting staff and community criticism over a controversial job listing for the Indianapolis Museum of Art that described a need to attract a more diverse set of patrons while “maintaining the museum’s traditional, core, white art audience.”
Executioners who put 13 inmates to death in the last months of the Trump administration likened the process of dying by lethal injection to falling asleep and called gurneys “beds” and final breaths “snores.” The sworn accounts by executioners, which government filings cited as evidence the lethal injections were going smoothly, raise questions about whether officials misled courts to ensure the executions scheduled from July to mid-January were done before death penalty opponent Joe Biden became president.
The GOP-controlled Indiana House has voted to override Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb’s veto of a controversial landlord-tenant bill, allowing the measure to become law. The measure could eliminate local regulation of rental properties, most notably in Indianapolis. Both Holcomb and Democratic Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett expressed disappointment in the Legislature.
For the second time this year, the Indiana State Bar Association is publicly opposing legislation targeting judicial selection in Indiana, this time speaking against a bill that it says would “unnecessarily change a working system” for judicial selection in Lake and St. Joseph counties.
The Indiana Senate is moving forward with a bill to curtail the governor’s executive order privileges that is significantly different from the House version of the legislation designed to curtail emergency powers.
Legislation that would have stripped control of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department from the city’s mayor is dead for the year. Meanwhile, a separate police oversight bill was voted down in committee by request of its author.
A bill that would allow the Indiana attorney general to step in if local elected prosecutors decline to file criminal charges narrowly passed a Senate committee Tuesday without the support of public defenders or Indiana prosecutors. A longtime advocate said when both sides in criminal matters oppose legislation, lawmakers should take notice.
A Gary man convicted of a 2003 double-murder failed to convince an appeals panel that his 120-year sentence should be reduced. The Indiana Court of Appeals rejected the arguments Wednesday.
The Indiana Supreme Court on Monday issued an order appointing Miller, now a senior judge, back to the court she attempted to retire from last year. The order authorizes Miller to serve as a St. Joseph Superior Court judge until May 1 as a fight over her potential successor plays out in another court.
A request by grandparents to adopt a grandson found to be a child in need of services was properly denied, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday, upholding a trial court’s determination that adoption was not in the child’s best interests.