Articles

Two ex-nursing home execs to plead guilty in kickback scheme

Two former executives with a company that operates dozens of Indiana nursing homes have agreed to plead guilty in a kickback scheme involving millions of dollars. Court documents unsealed this week show that former American Senior Communities CEO James Burkhart and former Chief Operating Officer Daniel Benson, both 52, have reached plea deals.

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7th Circuit affirms ruling for employer on discrimination claims

Indiana’s Southern District Court properly granted summary judgment to a black man on a discrimination case against his former employer after finding the man failed to prove his termination was based on discriminatory practices, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.

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Year End Review - Indiana Tech Law School

Top 10 legal stories of 2017 focus on law schools, court changes

The closing of 4-year-old Indiana Tech Law School in Fort Wayne, and the revelation that 138-year-old Valparaiso University Law School faced an uncertain future, made law school troubles the top legal news story of 2017, as determined by the staff of Indiana Lawyer. Changes on the federal and state bench also were among the year’s top stories.

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Southern District’s Lawrence to take senior status in 2018

Judge William T. Lawrence for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, has announced his decision to take senior status July 1, 2018, creating another opening in the Southern District that already has one judicial vacancy and is still recovering from the loss of two colleagues.

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Civic education endowment started in McKinney’s honor

To support its civic education programs, the Indiana Bar Foundation is starting an endowment and will name it after one of the civic education’s biggest cheerleaders – the late Larry McKinney, senior judge with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.

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7th Circuit upholds qualified immunity

The Department of Correction’s religious director was entitled to qualified immunity on a complaint alleging he violated two Jewish plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights by failing to delay their transfer to a facility that did not offer Jewish group worship services, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday.

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Hill moves to intervene in case restricting local ICE detentions

Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill has filed a motion to intervene in a federal immigration case after a district court judge entered a consent decree barring the Marion County Sheriff’s Office from detaining illegal immigrants for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement without a warrant or probable cause. The decree implicates the state’s ability to enforce its own statutes, Hill argued, thus creating the need for the state to intervene and file an appeal.

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Citing civil forfeiture ruling, trial court returns seized property

Nearly four months after a district court judge struck down portions of Indiana’s civil forfeiture statute as unconstitutional, the effects of that decision are now being felt in Indiana’s trial courts, where a judge has ordered the return of seized property pursuant to the district court’s ruling.

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