The VLW Blog

Just in time for Halloween, a contract and copyright dispute over the rights to a documentary that may be coming soon to a venue near you: Your Mommy Kills Animals. Plaintiffs Richard Berman and Maura Flynn and Flynn’s business, Speakeasy Video, say they had a deal with defendant Curt Johnson, of Indie Genius Productions, for [...]

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When civil rights giant Oliver W. Hill died Aug. 5 at age 100, the Richmond chapter of the Old Dominion Bar Association already was looking forward to the “Next Hundred Years.” For several years, the Richmond chapter’s flagship program has been providing scholarships to first-year law students in order to nurture the next generation of [...]

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Maybe a defendant convicted of drug conspiracy deserves a break because most of his crack distribution occurred during the three-year period before he turned 19. But what if the defendant, “K-Smooth,” was one of the few members of the 30-odd defendants from Petersburg’s “Third Ward Gang” to go to trial in Richmond federal district court? [...]

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The Virginia Court of Appeals did some line-drawing yesterday, and let criminal defense lawyers know there is at least one case that should not have drawn a Rule 5A:18 argument. Defense lawyers know the power of the contemporaneous objection rule, and how carefully the appellate court scrutinizes the record to make sure trial counsel hit [...]

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“How’m I doing?” was former New York City Mayor Ed Koch’s trademark greeting to his constituents. Lawyers may ask themselves the same question. Lawyers who labor in a law firm often use the almighty billable hour as their primary measure of productivity. But an attorney who works for a corporation may come at that billable-hour [...]

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Professor Neill H. Alford Jr., who taught law at the University of Virginia law school for 41 years, has died at the age of 88. The Richmond Times-Dispatch has an appreciation.

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The Virginian-Pilot is reporting that Norfolk Circuit Judge Alfred M. Tripp has been barred from court. The paper’s source did not state the reasons for the action. The judge’s docket was transferred to another judge Friday and a substitute judge was scheduled to sit today. The source spoke anonymously due to the secret nature of [...]

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The Virginia State Bar Council took decidedly different positions Friday on two issues described as public protection measures. One was a proposal to require insurance companies to notify claimants when they mail settlement checks to the claimants’ attorneys. That measure stemmed from the theft of the proceeds of such checks by a small percentage of [...]

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The results for the July 2007 Virginia Bar Examination are in. Click on the words above and you’ll head to a list of the 1,081 applicants who were successful in Roanoke last summer. A total of 1,502 people sat for the exam. Do the math and that makes a pass rate of 71.9 percent. Congratulations [...]

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Read the 2006 federal rules on e-discovery, but don’t ignore the old case law, a Richmond federal district judge told lawyers yesterday at a Richmond-area bench-bar conference. The changes to Federal Rules 26, 33, 34 and 37 didn’t develop in a vacuum, and the case law framework for resolving discovery disputes is still relevant, regardless [...]

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