Agee offers advice to appeals counsel
By Peter Vieth
Published: April 7, 2008
If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a hundred times. From law professors, colleagues and appellate judges, the admonishment on brief writing is the same – keep it short and concise.
Few advisors, however, illustrate the issue as colorfully as Supreme Court Justice Steven Agee speaking to the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association:
“We get our [...]
Lawyers in the News
By Sarah Rodriguez
Published: April 7, 2008
Matthew R. Foster has become associated with the Portsmouth law firm of Bangel, Bangel & Bangel LLP, where he will specialize in personal injury litigation. Foster earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and his law degree from Widener University.
* * *
Daniel H. Caldwell has joined the Abingdon law firm of McElroy & [...]
Criminal – Credit Card Fraud – Intent 
By Deborah Elkins
Published: April 7, 2008
Where the owner of the company that employed defendant did not know that a bank had issued ATM cards associated with a “dormant” company account and testified he had never given defendant permission to use such ATM cards with withdraw company funds from the account, there was sufficient evidence to convict defendant of credit card [...]
Criminal – Sex Offender Registration – Probation Violation
By Deborah Elkins
Published: April 7, 2008
A defendant who pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual battery and sodomy but who failed to register as a violent sex offender in 2005 and 2006 and failed to cooperate with treatment efforts violated conditions of his supervised probation for his failure to register as a sex offender.
The trial court did not abuse its discretion in [...]
Criminal – SANE Report – Crawford Violation
By Deborah Elkins
Published: April 7, 2008
The Court of Appeals declines to reconsider its earlier ruling in this case, on interlocutory appeal by the commonwealth, that reversed the trial court’s exclusion of a report by the sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) as a violation of defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights as recognized in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004).
Upon remand of [...]
Domestic Relations – Spousal Support – Marital Award Reversal
By Deborah Elkins
Published: April 7, 2008
A divorce court improperly awarded wife a greater percentage of the marital property in order to pay for expenses properly covered by spousal support, and the court’s equitable distribution award is reversed and remanded, which moots consideration of wife’s appeal of the spousal support award.
We have held in Lightburn v. Lightburn, 22 Va. App. 612 [...]
Domestic Relations – Full Faith & Credit – Mass. Divorce Order
By Deborah Elkins
Published: April 7, 2008
A Virginia divorce court did not err in granting full faith and credit to a Massachusetts divorce judgment obtained by wife and dismissing husband’s divorce suit in Virginia, as the record discloses the Massachusetts court’s personal jurisdiction was fully and fairly litigated and finally decided in that court’s jurisdiction, husband was barred from relitigating that [...]
Domestic Relations – Custody & Visitation – Attorney’s Lien – Jurisdiction
By Deborah Elkins
Published: April 7, 2008
The Virginia Court of Appeals has no jurisdiction to consider a mother’s claim that the trial court erred in awarding and enforcing the attorney’s lien for unpaid legal fees filed by a law that previously had represented mother in this divorce proceeding.
The law firm claimed an attorney’s charging lien for unpaid fees pursuant to Va. [...]
Criminal – Child Rape – Nature Of Contact
By Deborah Elkins
Published: April 7, 2008
Although a girl’s testimony established that defendant, her mother’s live-in boyfriend, raped her the first time he molested her, her description of subsequent incidents of sexual contact describe “oral or intercourse sex” without specifying more precisely what conduct occurred, and the appellate court must reverse seven of eight counts of rape on which defendant was [...]
Lawyers offer poll in bid for justice’s recusal from Massey case
By News in Brief
Published: April 7, 2008
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) Lawyers defending a $76 million judgment won against Massey Energy Co. hope a poll of 753 West Virginians will help convince a state Supreme Court justice to recuse himself from deciding the case.
Justice Brent Benjamin has previously declined requests from Harman Mining Co. and its president to withdraw from Massey’s appeal.
Harman and [...]
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