COVID may have seemed like the only thing that happened in 2020, but for Indiana’s legal community, the past year brought watershed developments that will be with us for years to come, many of which were touched directly by the pandemic. Here are the Top 10 non-coronavirus Indiana legal news stories as determined by consensus of the Indiana Lawyer editorial staff.
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At 10 a.m. Monday, Leanna Weissmann transitioned from practitioner to judge. “What a star,” Chief Justice Loretta Rush said of Weissmann when her appointment was announced. “I will miss you standing before me arguing cases. … I always knew it would be a whale of an argument.”
Read MoreNorthern Indiana property owners were relieved of the bulk of a court order requiring them to pay more than $48,000 to connect to a sewer system, including a ruling on appeal voiding an award of more than $20,000 in attorney fees to the sewer district.
A local utility breached its contract with its former directors when it revoked their health insurance coverage, a majority of the Indiana Court of Appeals has ruled. A dissenting judge, however, found that the majority engaged in a “logical fallacy” in holding that the utility was obligated to continue providing coverage to the plaintiffs.
A man who set fire to a government building to destroy evidence of pornography constituting parole violations will have one of his arson convictions vacated after the Indiana Court of Appeals used recent caselaw to find a double jeopardy violation.
A man whose parole from a child molesting sentence was revoked after he had an “unapproved romantic relationship” lost his appeal Tuesday, with the Indiana Court of Appeals holding he confused the conditions of parole and probation revocation.
A small claims case arising from a COVID-canceled vacation will return to the trial court after the Indiana Court of Appeals found dismissal was improper.
It’s been more than 15 years since Andrew Royer was convicted of an Elkhart County murder and more than nine months after he was freed due to concerns over his confession and other evidence, but his case is not over yet. Instead, it’s back at the Indiana Court of Appeals, where the state is asking for the reversal of an order giving Royer a new trial.
Despite the trial court’s erroneous failure to consider a woman’s history as a victim of human trafficking, her 14-year sentence on felony charges is not inappropriate, the Indiana Court of Appeals has ruled.
A split Indiana Court of Appeals has reversed the denial of a teenager’s petition for post-conviction relief of his murder conviction, finding his attorneys performed deficiently in a 2017 trial related to the fatal shooting of a South Bend toddler.
The 65-year sentence of a man convicted of murder was affirmed Monday on appeal, but a judge wrote separately to “address a practical dilemma facing appellate courts, lawyers, and litigants” after recent appeals revised longstanding double jeopardy caselaw.
A woman who was strip searched while being processed at the Marion County Jail, turning up a small packet of cocaine on her breast, lost her drug-conviction appeal Friday. The newest member of the Indiana Court of Appeals dissented, warning the majority’s holding in the case “would render per se reasonable a strip search of every person being processed for a substance offense, no matter how minor.”
An appellate panel has reversed a man’s confinement and kidnapping convictions for violations of substantive double jeopardy, following the lead of two recent Indiana Supreme Court decisions that changed the double jeopardy analysis.
A divided Indiana Court of Appeals panel on Tuesday reversed in favor of the University of Notre Dame in a negligence dispute brought by a woman who broke her shoulder after tripping during a basketball game.
The Indiana Court of Appeals on Friday affirmed judgment against Miami County employees who caused more than $100,000 in damages to water lines that supplied the City of Peru during an attempted logjam removal.