The years-long struggle between public and private rights along Indiana’s Lake Michigan shoreline continues in the Indiana Statehouse and in federal court, even as the state marks the two-year anniversary of a landmark Indiana Supreme Court decision that ruled in the public’s favor.
Read MoreIndiana lawmakers are considering a bill that would undo a landmark Indiana Supreme Court ruling that affirmed that the shoreline of Lake Michigan is unquestionably owned by the state and held in trust for use by all residents.
The Indiana House has voted to eliminate the last remaining township assessor offices around the state.
A northern Indiana woman will spend up to 39 years in prison in connection with the sex trafficking of a 12-year-old female relative.
A lakeshore property owner in northern Indiana was unable to convince the Indiana Tax Court on Wednesday that an abuse of discretion took place when his vacant lot was assessed at a higher rate than he had hoped.
The 2019 Michigan City mayoral election is facing a controversial legal undercurrent as felony charges remain pending against Mayor Ron Meer. But as the LaPorte County court system searches for a judge who can take the case, Meer is alleging an “untenable conflict of interest” and possible political motivations should remove the proceedings from the LaPorte County Prosecutor’s Office.
The mayor of Michigan City will name a new police chief this week after the resignations of three senior officers. Mayor Ron Meer says he’ll hold a news conference Tuesday, after Police Chief Mark Swistek and assistant chiefs Royce Williams and Kevin Urbanczyk announced their resignations last week.
The top brass of Michigan City’s police force resigned in the wake of a dispute with city’s mayor.
A “well-organized machine” of thieves appears to be behind the theft of tons of apples and pumpkins from orchards and farms in northern Indiana and Michigan, according to authorities.
The Indiana Court of Appeals on Tuesday rejected multiple arguments regarding its prior decision involving the LaPorte County auditor’s failure to check records that would have revealed the address of a Michigan City property owner whose land was sold without notice for back taxes.
An Indiana Court of Appeals panel has affirmed a sex offender’s seven-year sentence despite his assertions that the sentence was inappropriate, despite a finding that a trial court improperly used the offender’s risk assessment scores as an aggravating factor.
The LaPorte County auditor’s failure to check records that would have revealed the actual address of a Michigan City property owner whose land was sold without notice for back taxes was a denial of constitutional due process, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday. The appeals court reinstated the landowner’s challenge to the tax sale results and remanded the case.
A suspended lawyer already accused in three counties of stealing money from ex-clients’ special needs trusts has been charged in Indianapolis with allegedly stealing from another victim. The latest charges against Kenneth Shane Service include a count of racketeering.
A successor trustee who argued his late uncle’s farmland should be converted to a supervised estate was rejected when an appellate panel found a trust agreement’s language — or lack thereof — failed to make the farmland property of the trust.
A bill establishing in state law the permitted public uses of the shore of Lake Michigan passed the Indiana Senate on Monday and now moves to the House for consideration.
A suspended Greenwood lawyer criminally charged with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his former special needs trust clients around Indiana has been accused in new civil lawsuits of draining another $108,600 from several more trust funds. The additional alleged misappropriations by Kenneth Shane Service drive the alleged missing funds to more than $318,600.
A bill that defines the shore of Lake Michigan as belonging to the public and spells out public recreational uses of the shoreline has moved to the full Indiana Senate. Meanwhile, a petition seeking to privatize Indiana’s Great Lakes beaches will be before justices of the Supreme Court of the United States this week.
A lawsuit naming Gov. Eric Holcomb filed on behalf of a prisoner on Indiana’s death row urges a state court to issue an injunction halting capital punishment and rule that the state’s ultimate criminal penalty violates the Indiana Constitution.
The U.S. Supreme Court won’t decide until next year whether to consider arguments from residents of Chief Justice John Roberts’ Indiana hometown of Long Beach over ownership of the Lake Michigan community’s shoreline. The case could have a ripple effect for public and private property rights across the Great Lakes states.
A former Hoosier who moved to Florida will get to keep his money after the Indiana Court of Appeals found an order from a Wisconsin state court was void because the Badger State judicial system did not have personal jurisdiction.
After a years-long fight, the Indiana Supreme Court in February issued a ruling that affirmed what’s come naturally to generations of Hoosiers: Indiana’s beach on Lake Michigan belongs to the public.
But parties who sued to privatize the beach, whose names are the only plaintiffs listed on filings to the U.S. Supreme Court, don’t own the property. They haven’t for years.