The VLW Blog

The Supreme Court of Virginia has let stand an $8 million verdict for the family of a high school senior who was killed in a car wreck in Fairfax County in September 2002.
The court heard arguments last month in Mongold v. Chu, Record No. 061390, and concluded in an unpublished order on Friday that [...]

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The committee appointed to recommend a replacement for Virginia State Bar Executive Director Thomas A. Edmonds had hoped to have a candidate by the VSB’s annual meeting next month.
But the committee has decided to re-advertise for the position, said Phillip V. Anderson, the immediate past VSB president and chairman of the committee.
The first advertisements produced [...]

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It is good to be Sen. Tommy Norment this month.
In the past few weeks, the College of William and Mary, where he went to law school, laid two big awards on him.
This afternoon’s e-mail says that now Virginia Military Institute, the senator’s undergraduate alma mater, is saluting him as well.
The board of [...]

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Blake Morant, who has been a member of the Washington and Lee law faculty for 10 years, has been named dean of the Wake Forest University law school. He starts his new job July 1.
Morant’s teaching specialties are in contracts, administrative law and communications law. He is the current associate dean for academic affairs [...]

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Lawyers’ business clients have used arbitration for years to resolve commercial disputes.
But there’s business, and then, there’s bidness.
Senior U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar had a case in Norfolk federal district court last month, Al-Haddad Commodities Corp. v. Toepfer Int’l Asia PTE Ltd. (VLW 007-3-147), that pitted an international commodities trader against an agricultural commodity [...]

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Yesterday, VLW posted a blog item entitled “Federal court as defense haven.” The item reported remarks made at a seminar held at the Spring Section meetings of the Virginia Association of Defense Attorneys at Keswick Hall May 11.
Over many years, reporters from Virginia Lawyers Weekly have attended numerous meetings held by Virginia bar groups, [...]

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Glenn Lewis, president of the Virginia Bar Association and divorce law expert, is no stranger to television.
Lewis (pictured at right) had his own cable TV gig in Fairfax for years. During the Bush-Gore ballot count in 2000, he was a stateside commentator for the BBC.
Lewis has taken his game to a new level. [...]

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Sen. Tommy Norment, R-James City County, and the College of William and Mary have quite a thing for each other.
Norment, a graduate of the W and M law school and a partner in the Williamsburg office of Kaufman & Canoles PC, represents an area that includes the school’s Williamsburg campus. He is one of [...]

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The lead story in this week’s issue of Virginia Lawyers Weekly presents a case with a first-impression issue of corporate law.
In WAKA LLC v. Humphrey, a case involving an adult kickball league, Fairfax Circuit Judge Leslie M. Alden found that members of an LLC owe no fiduciary duty to one other.

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Spilman, Thomas & Battle PLLC, a 102-lawyer firm based in Charleston, W. Va., has offices in Pennsylvania and North Carolina but not in Virginia.
That will change July 1 when Spilman absorbs the seven-lawyer Roanoke firm of Melchionna, Day, Ammar & Black PC.
The combined firms will take the Spilman name, and the four shareholders of Melchionna [...]

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