The VLW Blog

A new suit in Norfolk federal court involves … pancakes. Actually, it involves two companies that run pancake houses, one in the Outer Banks of North Carolina and the other in Williamsburg (where pancake houses are as common as tourists), and their names. The Virginian-Pilot reports that the company that runs restaurants called “Stack’em High [...]

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Any “grace period” litigators have had since the new e-discovery rules went into effect in December 2006 may be coming to a close. “Courts are becoming increasingly intolerant of e-discovery errors and omissions,” says Jeane Thomas, a Washington D.C. lawyer and expert on e-discovery. Thomas was on a panel program June 15 at Virginia Beach [...]

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Fredericksburg Circuit Judge John W. Scott Jr. has ordered the city council to fix unsafe conditions at the city’s courthouse, reports The Free Lance-Star. He also ordered all staff to move out of the building while repairs were made. The judge’s action comes in response to an appearance by Circuit Clerk Sharron Mitchell last week, [...]

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A newspaper carrier who was left a quadriplegic after a garbage truck collided with this 1990 Jeep Cherokee in Fairfax County has settled his claim for $12 million. Jerome Stewart has medical bills of more than $1 million and has endured every possible complication related to the quadriplegia, according to Richmond attorney John C. Shea, [...]

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Moonshine has a place in the popular imagination. There was Snuffy Smith, the outdated cartoon hillbilly who fought off “revenooers.” Then, there was “Thunder Road.” Not the Bruce Springsteen song off the “Born to Run” album – the 1958 Robert Mitchum movie in which a Korean War vet came home to the mountains to run [...]

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It was a few hours after a disciplinary panel of the North Carolina State Bar found that Mike Nifong, the Durham district attorney handling the Duke lacrosse team rape case, had withheld crucial evidence from the defendants and that engaged in fraud and deceit. And it was just a few minutes before the panel was [...]

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The Virginia State Bar Council has agreed to conduct a thorough discussion at its Oct. 19 meeting on whether the VSB should require that all lawyers who represent the public carry malpractice insurance. Darrel Tillar Mason, the chairman of a subcommittee studying the issue, came to council Thursday with a more modest proposal: requiring submission [...]

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The trial of the $54 million pants suit in DC came to an end on Wednesday, and the presiding judge said she will issue a ruling next week. This case involves an administrative law judge, Roy Pearson, who took a pair of pants to a dry cleaners. He claims they lost the trousers and he [...]

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Virginia’s U.S. senators, John Warner and Jim Webb, have recommended five candidates to President Bush for two pending seats on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, reports The Associated Press. They are U.S. District Judge Glen E. Conrad, Virginia Supreme Court Justices G. Steven Agee and Donald W. Lemons, University of Richmond law Professor [...]

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Just hours before Christopher S. Emmett was scheduled to die for beating a co-worker to death while stealing money for drugs, Gov. Tim Kaine granted him a reprieve, reports The Associated Press. The governor said he wants to give the U.S. Supreme Court until Oct. 17 to consider granting Emmett’s appeal. Emmett is claiming his [...]

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