If you drive about an hour and a half due west of Ann Arbor, you will arrive in Comstock Township. The town of about 14,000 was the site of a recent home invasion in which a homeowner was killed.
Three police officers were also shot. All are expected to have full recoveries, news reports stated. A 35-year-old suspect was taken into custody at the Comstock home and has been charged with violent crimes that include murder, home invasion, kidnapping and more.
One man claims to have lost between $2.5 million and $3 million. A regular customer says has been bilked out of about $450,000. A third man is a family friend who says he has lost about $3 million.
All three claim they are victims of a 58-year-old Detroit-area jeweler who has been arrested and charged with federal wire fraud.
A cosmetic surgeon is facing allegations of wrongdoing on a number of fronts, including in U.S. District Court in Michigan's Western District. A grand jury indictment charges Dr. Adam Smith with six counts of health care fraud and nine counts of making false statements relating to health care matters.
Smith practiced in Traverse City until 2014, when he moved to Sioux City, Iowa. He currently faces incompetence charges before that state’s medical board.
As regular readers of our Ann Arbor legal blog know, we recently published a post on enmeshment – the family dynamic in which personal boundaries and identities become blurred. Enmeshment can make it difficult – if not impossible – for a child to develop their own sense of self because they are focused on “feeling” the emotions experienced by their mother or father.
In many cases, experts say, the parent encouraging or fostering enmeshment is not doing it consciously but is rather perpetuating a pattern of behavior learned in their own childhood.
“Enmeshment” is for many an unfamiliar term, though the concept once explained can be immediately recognizable, especially to those grappling with the phenomenon in a family setting or child custody dispute.
Enmeshment can be described as a breakdown or blurring of boundaries between family members – most often a parent and child. It can make it difficult or impossible for a boy or girl to develop a sense of self that is apart from the parent because of constant concern for the mom or dad and the sense that they “feel” the parent’s emotions and that the parent feels theirs.
Michigan news outlets recently reported on the arrests of 26 suspects in an alleged scheme to defraud Medicaid, Medicare, employee health insurance plans and private payers. Defendants include 17 doctors and other medical professionals who allegedly tried to bilk Medicare and Medicaid out of $257 million.
Prosecutors say the health care fraud involved billing Medicare and Medicaid for services, tests and prescriptions that weren’t necessary or were not provided.
If you drive north of the Detroit metro for about two hours, you will arrive in Bay County, Michigan, sitting beside Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay. The scenic area was recently the site of the arrests of two Detroit-area men who have been charged with credit card fraud and larceny.
The Bay County sheriff said that when the 21- and 22-year-old suspects were taken into custody, they were attempting to use credit cards to purchases Visa gift cards at a local grocery store.
A few years ago, a dedicated group of legal and mental health professionals formed the Parental Alienation Study Group, an international, not-for-profit organization that wants to help the general public, mental health clinicians, forensic practitioners, attorneys and judges understand parental alienation. PASG is also busy developing and promoting research into the causes of parental alienation, as well as prevention, evaluation and treatment methods.
This year's PASG conference is from Thursday, Sept. 12 to Saturday, Sept. 14 in Philadelphia. The organization will feature a number of the leading voices on parental alienation, including Ann Arbor family law attorney Ashish Joshi.
Parental alienation is a phenomenon in which one parent tries to turn the couple's children against the other parent. These extraordinarily difficult divorce and child custody cases put courts to the test here in Michigan, as judges, lawyers and even family members struggle to make sense of disturbing accusations – though false and unfounded – made by a parent and child against the other parent.
Unsurprisingly, parental alienation cases are just as confounding in the UK as they are here. A recent BBC Radio report on this increasingly prevalent part of divorce and custody battles reached out to Ann Arbor family law attorney Ashish S. Joshi, an internationally recognized authority on the subject for his input.
In a recent 5-2 opinion, the Michigan Supreme Court agreed with a woman who argued that a police officer made an “unreasonable” arrest inside her apartment without a search warrant. Justices also questioned some of the evidence used to convict her of drunk driving and leaving the scene of an accident.
Jennifer Hammerlund and her attorney argued that her Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures were violated four years ago during her arrest in her home, and that the evidence gathered afterwards – alcohol breath tests indicating she was drunk – should be excluded from her case.
Joshi | 2433 Oak Valley Drive | Suite 500 | Ann Arbor, MI 48103 | Phone: 734-249-6170 | Fax: 734-327-5032 | Map & Directions
