Nursing Home Patient under Custodial Care Not Entitled to Coverage from Insurance
A U.S. court of appeals holds that a nursing home patient was not entitled to coverage from her health insurance plan for her nursing home stay because she received primarily custodial care, not skilled nursing services. Becker v. Chrysler LLC Health Care Benefits Plan (7th Cir., No. 11-2624, Aug. 20, 2012). Evelyn Jeranek had health insurance through her husband’s employer. The plan...
Read MoreFederal Court Rules That Gay Widow Is Entitled to Estate Tax Refund
Finding that the Defense of Marriage Act’s (DOMA’s) denial of equal benefits to same-sex couples violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment, a federal court judge has awarded the surviving spouse of a lesbian couple reimbursement for the tax bill she paid on her wife’s estate. Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer became engaged in 1967 and were married in Canada in...
Read MoreJudge Orders Refund to Estate That Paid Tax Before Madoff Con Was Revealed
When New Jersey resident Theodore Warshaw died in 2006, his estate was valued at more than $1.8 million. Because in New Jersey any amounts in an estate above $675,000 are subject to estate tax, Mr. Warshaw’s executors paid $88,677 to the state. The bulk of Mr. Warshaw’s assets were held in an IRA, and when he died the IRA went to a trust to benefit his widow. The IRA assets were allegedly being...
Read MoreAuthor’s Guild Lawsuit
The Author’s Guild has become quite litigious in recent years. The Guild’s lawsuit against Google for its Google Books project continues, and will go to trial sometime next year. Meanwhile, the Guild, along with Australian and Canadian authors’ organizations and eight individual authors, has filed another high-profile lawsuit, this time against the HathiTrust, a partnership of major research...
Read MoreUpdate On The Google Book Search Lawsuit
In a version of Dickens’ Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, we now are approaching the seventh year of the copyright infringement lawsuit againstGoogle because of its unauthorized digitizing of copyrighted works. (I addressed this topic in a previous post.) Briefly, in 2005 the Author’s Guild and other plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit against Google for its “Book Search,” alleging that Google...
Read MoreUpdate On The Google Book Search Lawsuit Settlement
Background: Four years ago, the Author’s Guild and other plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit against Google for its “Book Search,” alleging that Google violates the copyrights of authors and publishers in books by digitizing (scanning) them, creating an electronic database of books, and displaying short excerpts without the copyright owners’ permission. Google defended its practice by...
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