Cedar Rapids resident Robert Teig asked Cedar Rapids city officials for records related to the hiring of a new city clerk and city attorney. When they mostly denied Teig’s requests, he filed suit naming six Cedar Rapids officials as defendants, which the Linn County District Court dismissed on summary judgment.
Teig ma …
Lasondra Johnson was tried for first-degree murder for the shooting death of Jada Young-Mills outside a Waterloo residence. Johnson argued she acted in self defense and the shooting was justified under Iowa’s “stand your ground” law that says a person is justified in the use of reasonable force in the belief that such …
The Iowa Code requires that a plaintiff who brings medical malpractice claims in state court serve the defendant with an affidavit signed by an expert witness regarding the merits of the claim that the medical provider was negligent. The statute requires that the affidavit be signed under oath obligating the witness to be t …
Two assistant Iowa attorneys general subpoenaed to testify by deposition in an employment suit against the State appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court after the trial court denied their motion to quash the subpoenas. The Supreme Court held that while one of the attorneys is shielded from testifying, the other is not.
Depart …
In 2022 Brandon Lee entered the home of an elderly couple in Coggon, physically assaulted each of them with the aim of forcing them to reveal the location of cash, and left with $50,000 they had kept in a safe in the basement.
Lee was convicted by a Linn County jury for one count of theft and two counts of first-degree r …
[This article by Matthew A. McGuire, Spencer S. Cady, and Chris E. Slack was originally published in the August 2024 issue of The Iowa Lawyer magazine.]
The period between 2018 and 2022 was a period of great change for the Iowa Supreme Court, with five of the seven current justices joining the Court d …
When Daniel Snyder posted a comment on his employer’s intranet site expressing his opposition to the company’s use of a rainbow flag indicating support for LGBTQ+ equality, he believed he was sending the post to be seen only by the sender of an employee survey.
Instead, his post could be seen by all employees through …
The Iowa Supreme Court entered opinions in fifteen cases during June 2024. In addition to individual posts on six cases analyzed on this blog, the remaining opinions from June are summarized below.
The Iowa Court of Appeals selects certain opinions for publication in the Northwestern Reporter. On July 3, 2024, the Court of Appeals selected four opinions for publication. Following are summaries of those opinions.
On Brief: Iowa’s Appellate Blog is devoted to appellate litigation with a focus on the Iowa Supreme Court, the Iowa Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
