The Supreme Court of Virginia upheld Friday the lower court holdings in a sexually violent predator case and three criminal appeals. The court heard arguments in the cases last month and resolved the appeals with unpublished orders. In the SVP case, Graves v. Commonwealth, Record No. 100209, a Portsmouth judge admitted the statement of a [...]
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Posted in Civil Cases, Unpublished Orders on Oct 1st, 2010
Starting in the mid-90s, the Supreme Court of Virginia has cautioned trial judges against too-hasty summary judgment decisions. The latest example of that approach came Oct. 1, when the high court held that a trial judge in Virginia Beach erred in entering summary judgment for a litigant when the only issue before the court was [...]
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Posted in Civil Cases, Writs Granted on Oct 1st, 2010
A do-over that resulted in a 10-fold increase in the award for a rear-ended plaintiff and a dispute over a dissolving law firm’s capital account are among recent writs granted by the Supreme Court of Virginia. The retrial is Blevins v. Quarles, Record No. 100322, from Orange County, in which the trial judge set aside [...]
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Posted in Civil Cases, Unpublished Orders on Sep 30th, 2010
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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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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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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Lawyers won in two legal malpractice cases handed down today by the Supreme Court of Virginia. In Wintergreen Partners Inc. v. McGuireWoods LLP, the high court dismissed Wintergreen’s legal malpractice suit alleging McGuireWoods’ late filing of a transcript had blown the resort’s appeal of an $8.3 million jury award for a young woman injured on [...]
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Posted in Civil Cases on Sep 14th, 2010
An attorney for the Town of Leesburg acknowledged to the Supreme Court of Virginia yesterday that town council members had to have something more than their own opinion of the reasonableness of the surcharge the town placed on Loudoun County customers of its water and sewer service. But little more than that is required, Monica [...]
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