NC Fiduciary Litigation Commentary
If you’ve seen the true crime documentary series “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness”, you may recall Carole Baskins of Big Cat Rescue (“BCR”) sued Joseph Maldonado-Passage f/k/a Joe Schreibvogel a/k/a Joe Exotic in 2013 by for trademark infringement of the BCR logo. That lawsuit resulted in a judgment of approximately $1 million. Unfortunately for…
The Federal Trade Commission issued a warning that nursing homes in several states are trying to require their Medicaid residents to sign over their stimulus checks. However, according to the CARES Act, these payments are tax credits, and tax credits do not count as “resources” for the purposes of federal benefits programs like Medicaid. Individuals…
Effective May 4, 2020 through August 1, 2020, Notaries Public are permitted to notarize documents via video conferencing so as not to impede crucial business transactions, real estate transactions, estate planning necessities, medical documents, court documents, and most other important notarizations. In order to be valid, video notarizations must: Be conducted during a real time…
Class action lawsuits against large corporations are booming in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic. This month, we examined class action suits against both United Airlines and Ticketmaster regarding their wavering ticket refund policies. Unsurprisingly, given the chaos surrounding the Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”), several major U.S. banks find themselves defending a class action lawsuit…
Derek Hanson spent $590 on four tickets to two different Rage Against the Machine shows to be held in Oakland this month. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, those and about 55,000 other events scheduled between March and the end of the year were impacted. Previously, Live Nation and one of its divisions, Ticketmaster, had a…
Ayesha Curry, the 31-year-old wife of NBA superstar Steph Curry, was sued in Los Angeles Superior Court yesterday by celebrity branding company Flutie Entertainment. According to the lawsuit, Curry was trying to build herself as a global brand when she signed a five-year deal with Flutie Entertainment in November 2014. Robert A. Flutie, the founder…
Minnesota police officer Jacob Rudolph planned to take his family to Hilton Head, SC for vacation on April 4, 2020—then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Rudolph paid $1,521.45 for three tickets in January 2020. The airline cancelled thousands of flights due to the coronavirus pandemic, impacting thousands more customers. United Airlines offered to rebook its customers’…
In 1718, decades before the Founding Fathers quarreled over State’s rights versus Federal rights, Blackbeard’s infamous Queen Anne’s Revenge ran aground off the coast of Beaufort, North Carolina. Nearly 300 years later, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously ruled that all States enjoy sovereign immunity from copyright lawsuits. In June 2019, we published…
Foremost, if you haven’t seen Netflix’s seven-part, true crime documentary series “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness”, do yourself a quarantine favor and watch it now. Joseph Maldonado-Passage f/k/a Joe Schreibvogel a/k/a Joe Exotic is a former big cat breeder and roadside zoo owner who is currently serving a 22-year prison sentence for two counts of…
In 2003, Kobe Bryant created a trust for the benefit of his wife, Vanessa, and their children. Last amended in 2017, the trust does not provide for their nine-month-old daughter, Capri. If Kobe were still alive, the trust could have been amended with relative ease by his signing an amendment drafted by his estate planning…