Federal Courts | Virginia Lawyers Weekly

Couple wins defamation case against TV station

By Sarah Rodriguez
Published: May 24, 2012
Tags: Defamation, Federal Courts, Judge Tommy E. Miller, Million-Dollar Verdicts

“On your side” consumer reports have become a staple of local television news coverage. The consumer reporter investigates complaints about a business and reports findings, often including how the station helped an angry citizen.
But a 2010 report on a Hampton Roads TV station went too far, according to a federal jury in Norfolk.
Earlier this [...]

‘Like’ on Facebook is not protected

By Deborah Elkins
Published: May 4, 2012
Tags: Constitutional, Federal Courts, Judge Raymond A. Jackson

A Facebook “like” for a boss’s political opponent is not protected speech under the First Amendment, a federal judge in Newport News said last month.
One “click of a button” on a Facebook page does not warrant constitutional protection under existing case law, the judge said, in a lawsuit over public employees’ free speech and association [...]

Basing hiring decisions on criminal history may violate civil rights law, EEOC warns

By Dolan Media Newswires
Published: May 2, 2012
Tags: Employment, Federal Courts

BALTIMORE — Employers beware: Your prohibition on hiring job applicants with arrest or conviction records could land you in trouble with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
In a new guidance to employers, job applicants and its own investigators, the EEOC states that a blanket prohibition could screen out qualified black and Hispanic job applicants, violating [...]

Payne: Go slow on litigation reforms

By Peter Vieth
Published: April 30, 2012
Tags: Federal Courts, Judge Robert E. Payne

SALEM—Business groups may be squealing about litigation costs, but a senior federal judge urges caution on discovery restrictions.
In fact, Richmond Senior U.S. District Judge Robert E. Payne says big corporate defendants may share the blame for expensive lawsuits because they file too many motions.
“A great deal of the problem is not in the system of [...]

Eyewitness casts doubt on truck driver’s slip & fall claim – Summary judgment granted

By Virginia Lawyers Weekly
Published: April 30, 2012
Tags: Federal Courts, Judge Samuel G. Wilson, Premises Liability

The plaintiff, a commercial truck driver from Elizabethton, Tenn., alleged that he fell because of defects in the parking lot of a travel plaza in Wytheville. The property was owned by defendant A.T. Williams Oil Company and operated by defendant WilcoHess LLC. Although plaintiff pled that an accumulation of diesel fuel or oil caused his [...]

Fate of Megaupload data is up in the air

By The Associated Press
Published: April 20, 2012
Tags: Federal Courts, Judge Liam O'Grady

ALEXANDRIA (AP) It’s a cache of data roughly equivalent to half of the Library of Congress and nobody quite knows what to do with it.
Tens of millions of digital files kept on Megaupload.com went dark earlier this year. Megaupload was a cyberlocker of sorts, a service that offered individuals and businesses storage space for [...]

Judge: Failure to pay wages, overtime a violation of FLSA – $86,450 Verdict

By Virginia Lawyers Weekly
Published: April 16, 2012
Tags: Employment, Federal Courts, Judge Liam O'Grady

Plaintiff worked at the defendant’s floor company. He was not paid $37,400 in wages by the defendant, who kept promising he would get paid. The plaintiff’s evidence showed that he worked six days a week, for 12 hours per day and sometimes more. The plaintiff, a recent immigrant, did not know he was entitled to [...]

Jocks in the Courts

By Paul Fletcher
Published: April 9, 2012
Tags: Contract, Criminal, Domestic Relations, Fairfax County Circuit Court, Federal Courts, Supreme Court of Virginia News, Traffic Offenses, Virginia Court of Appeals News

Pro athletes make lots of money. Their lives are glamorous, if you read the tabloids. But superstars’ lives can be pretty messy, as messy as the lives of the mere mortals who are their fans. And sometimes those messes turn legal.
Look in this issue’s Verdicts & Settlements Reports and you’ll find a name usually associated [...]

Court repudiates AG’s method of setting lien on settlements

By Peter Vieth
Published: April 5, 2012
Tags: Federal Courts, Judge Andre M. Davis, Personal Injury

The state’s share of a personal injury settlement with expenses paid by Medicaid must be based on evidence of those medical expenses and not on a commonly used one-third allocation, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.
The decision in a North Carolina case could change how the Virginia attorney general’s office determines the [...]

Big Stone, NN courthouses on list for possible closure

By Peter Vieth
Published: March 29, 2012
Tags: Federal Courts

Two Virginia federal courthouses are marked for possible closing under a federal judiciary study.
The federal courthouses in Newport News and Big Stone Gap are on a list of lesser used courthouses circulated among federal judges for review and comment, according to the Associated Press. The comments are expected to be considered by a committee of [...]

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