The VLW Blog

Any number of divorcing couples has learned – usually the hard way – that you can’t use child support as a bargaining chip in trying to strike a deal on a property settlement agreement.
A couple in Roanoke is the latest to get this lesson. In Wykle v. Wykle (VLW 007-8-130), the husband and wife [...]

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Many lawyers in Virginia may never take an appeal to the Supreme Court of Virginia, let alone the U.S. Supreme Court.
But law students at the University of Virginia, working in the school’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, will be able to put a trip to the nation’s high court on their resumes. One of their [...]

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A lawyer might understand a distinction between “illegal conduct” by a judge and a lack of statutory authority for judicial action, but everybody at a Republican breakfast in Virginia Beach on Feb. 3 probably wasn’t a lawyer.
Or maybe it’s a distinction without a difference to Virginia Beach’s nine circuit judges.
The Virginian-Pilot reports that Bryant acknowledged [...]

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Here’s one for the public-sector employment lawyers.
Those lawyers know that public employees have First Amendment rights and can sue employers who abridge those rights.
But the First Amendment only protects employee speech on matters of “public concern.” A lot of workplace speech can involve issues peculiar to that workplace and personal to that employee. It isn’t [...]

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The Washington Post reports that the Bush administration has given up its efforts to block Wiccans from putting their religious symbol, a pentacle (a five-pointed star in a circle), on the tombstones of soldiers who are buried in a military graveyards, including Arlington National Cemetery. Wicca, apparently one of the nation’s fastest growing faiths, is [...]

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Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act passed by Congress in 2003.
The ruling already is causing a ripple in Virginia. The high court has ordered the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to revisit a ruling from 2005 in which a three-judge panel found a [...]

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Roanoke lawyer David Nixon claimed that two senators – Ken Stolle and Tommy Norment – broke the conflict of interest of rules when they worked to rewrite Virginia’s eminent domain laws during the past General Assembly session. Their firm, Kaufman & Canoles, represents a number of local governments that could benefit from the changed condemnation [...]

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The plant was built in 1949 but in recent years has become a point of concern as residential development that has crept closer and closer to it. However, the stratagems the city attempted to use to authorize the plant’s removal ran afoul of Virginia Code § 15.2-2307 Justice Elizabeth B. Lacy wrote for a unanimous [...]

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A new rack of cases came down from the Supreme Court of Virginia this morning…
Among the holdings: The court says that there is no statutory cause of action for personal injury in the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act.
Justice Cynthia Kinser wrote the unanimous opinion in Isbell v. Commercial Investment Assocs. Inc.

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The judicial nominations committee of the Virginia State Bar announced its endorsements for seats on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at the VSB’s Executive Committee meeting at Stratford Hall yesterday and this morning.
Committee chair Joe Condo, VSB President Karen Gould and several others met with Sens. John Warner and Jim Webb earlier [...]

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