Trial court properly dismissed a third-party spoliation claim when there was no special relationship between the parties to create a duty to preserve the evidence.
Supreme
Cooley v. Cooley, No. 23S-DN-245, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind., March 20, 2024).
Trial courts have broad statutory authority to order a security or other guarantee, when necessary, to secure the division of property in a dissolution of marriage; the trial court properly required husband to obtain and subsidize a life insurance policy on his retirement benefits.
A.W. v. State, No. 23S-JV-40, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind., March 12, 2024).
Under the second step of the double jeopardy test announced in the Indiana Supreme Court’s Wadle opinion, when assessing whether an offense is factually included, a court may examine only the facts as presented on the face of the charging instrument. Moreover, where ambiguities exist in a charging instrument about whether one offense is factually included in another, courts must construe those ambiguities in the defendant’s favor, and thus find a presumptive double jeopardy violation. In this event, the State can later rebut this presumption at the third step of the Wadle test.
WEOC, Inc. v. Niebauer, No. 23S-CT-184, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind., Feb. 12, 2024).
The Dram Shop Act modified common-law liability against entities that furnish alcohol, but did not eliminate it.
Teising v. State, No. 24S-CR-55, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind., Feb. 15, 2024).
The maxim that “ignorance of the law is no excuse” does not relieve the State of its burden to prove criminal intent, even when the defendant bases their claimed lack of intent on a misunderstanding of the civil law.