The VLW Blog

Appomattox nursing home liability lawyer Bob Carter is no doubt making friends with some regional nursing home residents with a gift of 18 Wii gaming stations.  Carter said he donated the video game consoles last week to residents councils at 18 different nursing homes in the Lynchburg and Roanoke area. As Carter explained in his [...]

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Both Republican Bob McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds apparently would restore the moribund program that gave lawyers, jurors, and citizens a voice in Virginia’s judicial selection process. At the initial debate between the two candidates for governor, both endorsed a merit-based system of judge selection. “We should reform the whole process,” Deeds told the audience [...]

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 No disrespect intended, but the first impression from the gubernatorial debate today is that both Bob McDonnell and Creigh Deeds are a couple of motormouths. The debate format — like most — offers strictly-timed windows for comments from the candidates.  The ticking clock, combined with first-debate nerves, seems to drive the candidates to rattle off [...]

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Overheard at the Homestead: “I think it’s talking out of two sides of your mouth, which we do fairly regularly.” –Sen. Rob Hurt, discussing “secondary offense” crimes like texting-while-driving. “Social media and social networking let people know, like and trust you before you ever meet them.” –Legal marketer Heather Milligan “Sure enough, the sky is [...]

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A top aide to Gov. Tim Kaine says the special General Assembly session called by the governor is expected to focus solely on the issue of proving scientific tests in court, not on any other legislation that lawmakers might want to advance. Mark Rubin, counselor to the governor, told a Virginia Bar Association conference today [...]

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Lynchburg leaders announced they’ve raised enough money to restore the clock and bell at the city’s old courthouse, which is now a museum. As the VLW Blog previously noted, the museum that now occupies the old courthouse building was trying to raise $20,000 to bring the 150-year-old piece of history back to life. In a [...]

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Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., has introduced legislation to roll back federal civil pleading standards to the relaxed approach used by courts up until two years ago. In a reaction to what some have criticized as a subjective “plausibility” standard set in a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court case – and reinforced in May with the decision [...]

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The lawyer for the former head of the counseling center where Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho was referred for treatment says Cho’s records were accidentally removed from the unit.  The records surfaced this week, as announced by Gov. Kaine yesterday, but this is the first explanation of why the records had been unavailable until now. [...]

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Gov. Timothy M. Kaine this morning called a special session of the legislature for Aug. 19 to address the problems created by Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts. Mark Rubin, counsel to the governor, said, “A legislative fix doesn’t cure the problem, but it will help us manage the problem.” The problem is that the 5-4 decision by [...]

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A committee has been appointed to find a successor to U.Va. president John Casteen, who will retire in August 2010. The 19-person committee is made up of nine members of the Board of Visitors, six faculty members, two former rectors and two students, according to The Daily Progress.

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