The SCoVA Blog

L. Steven Emmert, perhaps the most active appellate attorney in state courts and the host of the popular www.virginia-appeals.com website, says he will seek the Supreme Court of Virginia seat that will be created by the retirement of Justice Lawrence L. Koontz Jr. It will be interesting to follow his quest since he has neither [...]

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School boards, not judges, have the final say on which school a child attends, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled Tuesday in a case from Fairfax County. A circuit judge had ordered the county school board to enroll children in a particular school as part of a custody proceeding, but the Supreme Court vacated the [...]

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The Supreme Court of Virginia has refused to rehear its June decision to remand a dispute over Episcopal church property to the Fairfax trial court. A unanimous high court said in June that nine Episcopal parishes in Northern Virginia that voted to separate from the Episcopal Church could not keep their church property in the [...]

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When a Campbell County landfill was found responsible for groundwater pollution at a Rustburg mobile home park, a jury was asked to fix the damages the county owed to the landowners. The jury’s $9-million award is the subject of an appeal granted last week by the Supreme Court of Virginia, according to The News & [...]

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In a few parting words, soon-to-be-retired Justice Lawrence Koontz of the Supreme Court of Virginia offered insights about appellate practice and his role in it at a recent meeting of the Ted Dalton American Inn of Court. As reported by Roanoke lawyer and blogger Jay O’Keefe, Koontz said the difference between trial judges and appellate [...]

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The case of a Norfolk judge who refused to enforce an arbitration clause in a nursing home contract is among the more interesting of the first flush of petitions for appeal granted by the Supreme Court of Virginia after its writ panel session earlier this month. We look at the case, Medical Facilities of America [...]

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Lawyers with cases on appeal to the Supreme Court of Virginia may get a “Rule to Show Cause.” The rule is nothing like the one the court issued recently to a Winchester lawyer who suggested the court “didn’t have the guts to handle” an issue he had raised on appeal. The court dismissed the rule, [...]

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No, Justice William C. Mims was not announcing himself as a “strict constructionist.” He is, however, ready for some plain talk about the plain language of Virginia’s statute of repose, Virginia Code § 8.01-250. Builders depend on the statute of repose to cut off any chance for personal injury claims after five years. Mims, joined [...]

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What happens when a judge without authority to hear an ex parte petition grants it anyway and no party has standing to object to it? You have what a concurring justice calls “a procedural Gordian knot.” The knot was tied when The Wall Street Journal attempted to enter the market to publish legal advertising in [...]

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A lawsuit filed in Virginia must be signed, by the plaintiff in his own hand if he’s pro se, or by a Virginia-licensed lawyer, if the plaintiff has counsel. The Supreme Court of Virginia reinforced that rule in two decisions handed down today, both of them personal injury suits filed after automobile accidents. In the [...]

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