The VLW Blog

A co-defendant of Michael Vick has acknowledged spending most of his time taking care of and training the pit bulls fought by “Bad Newz Kennels” through September 2004. Tony Taylor, a 34-year-old Hampton man, pleaded guilty today to a felony count of conspiring to engage in interstate dog fighting beginning in early 2001. Taylor faces [...]

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A Henrico County General District judge said today that he will rule next Thursday on the constitutionality of the civil remedial fees for abusive drivers. Anthony O. Price pleaded no contest before Judge Archer L. Yeatts III to a misdemeanor charge of driving on a suspended license. The plea subjected Price to the payment of [...]

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Marisa Taylor of McClatchy Newspapers Washington Bureau has an extended article on the U.S. Justice Department’s abandonment of the criminal investigation of the implosion of Reciprocal America, first reported in Virginia Lawyers Weekly on April 2. The article elicited more than 40 comments on the liberal blog. the Daily Kos, most of which view it, [...]

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Henrico General District Judge Archer L. Yeatts III today rejected an attempt to challenge Virginia’s new scheme of “abusive driver” fees, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Yeatts ruled that a general district court didn’t have the jurisdiction to stop the fees, which took effect July 1 and establish harsher financial penalty for certain traffic offenses. [...]

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Political reality outweighs a nuanced view of legal ethics. The Standing Committee on Legal Ethics of the Virginia State Bar reached that conclusion last week in withdrawing advisory Legal Ethics Opinion 1829, which would have eliminated the bright-line guidance that generally bars members of a law firm from appearing before a public body on which [...]

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Litigators who like to catalogue race-neutral bases for striking prospective jurors can add another one that has worked in federal court in Richmond: being a veteran of a Richmond jury. A 1986 case, Batson v. Kentucky, and its progeny protect parties against an exercise of peremptory strikes based on race or gender. In U.S. v. [...]

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Our colleagues at the Colorado Springs Business Journal have become the latest Dolan Media Company operation to join the blogosphere. They launched their blog, the CSBJ Blog, this past Monday. Previously the CSBJ had maintained a local golf league blog. Congrats to their publisher, Lon Matejczyk, and their editor, Mike Boyd. Cheers, gentlemen!

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Judge James W. Benton Jr., the last of the original members of the Virginia Court of Appeals, will retire Oct. 1. Benton (photo at right) turns 64 in September. He is also the state’s senior appellate judge. A native of Norfolk and a graduate of Temple University and the University of Virginia law school, Benton [...]

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President Bush yesterday nominated U.S. District Judge Robert J. Conrad Jr. to a seat on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Conrad (photo at right) is a judge in the Western District of North Carolina; he sits in Charlotte. He was nominated by Bush for his district court seat and confirmed unanimously in 2005. [...]

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Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick and three other men were indicted today in Richmond federal court on federal charges related to dog fighting. U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg announced the charges late in the afternoon. Vick and the others are accused of running a dog fighting enterprise called “Bad Newz Kennels” on Vick’s Smithfield property from [...]

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