Publisher's Notebook

Gov. Bob McDonnell received one of the highest awards given by the University of Notre Dame last week.

The Notre Dame Alumni Association presented the governor with the 2012 Rev. John J. Cavanaugh, C.S.C., Award. McDonnell graduated from the school in 1976.

Established in 1985, the Cavanaugh Award is conferred on an alumnus/alumna (living or deceased) who is performing or has performed outstanding service in the field of government, patriotism, public service, local, state or national politics.

Past recipients have included former Arizona governor and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt ’60, Gov. John Gilligan of Ohio ’43 and U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., ’68.

McDonnell, who practiced law in Virginia Beach before his election as Attorney General and then governor, is the second Cavanaugh recipient to hail from Hampton Roads.

In 2002, the Cavanaugh Award went to the late Philip L. Russo, who served as a Norfolk circuit judge from 1970 to 1992. Judge Russo earned his law degree from Notre Dame in 1949. He died in 2006.

Actor Corbin Bernsen sued a Virginia Beach-based legal marketing firm in Norfolk federal court last month, claiming it owed him more than $600 grand on a million-dollar contract he signed to represent them in a marketing campaign aimed at lawyers.

Their answer: You were the one who broke the deal, pal. And now you owe us $600,000.

Sounds like a plot from “L.A. Law,” the show in which Bernsen played Arnold Becker, a high-rent divorce lawyer.

The Virginian-Pilot reports that in a counterclaim against Bernsen, Innovative Legal Marketing says that the contract with Bernsen includes what one could call a “good behavior” clause. Bernsen agreed not to commit “any act or do anything which may tend to bring Bernsen into public disrepute, contempt, scandal, or ridicule or which might tend to reflect unfavorably” on Innovative or its clients.

Bernsen broke the deal, Innovative alleges, by, among other things:
• Appearing on a Cartoon Network comedy sketch that made fun of personal injury lawyers.
• Talking about youthful drug use and sex life in an interview on “Celebrity Ghost Stories.”
• Getting into a bar fight on a film shoot in Ohio in August 2010. A local starting admiring one of Bernsen’s female assistants; the matter ended up outside a diner with Bernsen throwing gravel and telling the local man “If I had a gun, you’d be dead,” according to contemporary news reports.

Stay tuned.

Corbin Bernsen, the actor best known as high-rent divorce lawyer Arnold Becker in the 1980s show “L.A. Law,” has filed a $600,000 lawsuit in Norfolk federal court.

Bernsen claims that in 2009 he signed a $1 million deal with a Virginia Beach marketing firm for a “media campaign aimed at lawyers and law firms.” Things were fine for about two years; however, in June, he says, the company terminated the agreement. Bernsen says he is owed $668,000. The Virginian-Pilot has the full story.