The Eighth Amendment’s protection against excessive fines places not only an instrumentality limit on use-based in rem fines, but also a proportionality one. Based on the totality of the circumstances, if the punitive value of the forfeiture is grossly disproportional to the gravity of the underlying offenses and the owner’s culpability for the property’s criminal use, the fine is unconstitutionally excessive.
Civil
In re Ma.H., No. 19S-JT-323, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind., Oct. 31, 2019).
Trial court did not violate father’s Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination by requiring father to select and complete a course of sex-offender treatment as part of civil child welfare proceedings.
In re Guardianship of Luis, No. 19A-GU-1276, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind. Ct. App., Nov. 1, 2019).
For Special Immigrant Juvenile status, trial courts are required to consider and make findings on two statutory elements: (1) is reunification with one or both parents viable due to abuse, neglect, abandonment, or a similar basis found under State law; and (2) would it be in the special immigrant’s best interest to be returned to her previous country of nationality or country of last habitual residence.
Riley v. St. Mary’s Medical Center of Evansville, No. 19A-CT-844, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind. Ct. App., Oct. 29, 2019).
Affidavit from a radiologic technologist was sufficient to rebut the medical review panel’s opinion on the element of causation and summary judgment should not have been granted.
Salyer v. Washington Regular Baptist Church Cemetery, No. 19A-PL-243, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind. Ct. App., Oct. 30, 2019).
Trial court did not abuse its discretion in fashioning a remedy that required the cemetery to provide plaintiff with a different gravesite rather than ordering the cemetery to have the individual buried in the gravesite she had previously purchased reinterred elsewhere so as to restore the gravesite for her use.