The VLW Blog

The wife of a former Greensboro, N.C., lawyer won a $9-million award for alienation of affection against a former college dean who was accused of luring the lawyer-husband away from domestic fidelity.
The verdict might have been inflated by the fact that the defendant, Anne Lundquist, didn’t show up to defend herself at trial. She told [...]

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When it comes to pleading adultery, a lawyer can’t use a claim of smoke to ferret out a fire.
In a Keeler v. Keeler, a new divorce case from Fairfax, the wife suspected adultery. In her divorce complaint, her lawyer cited the husband’s alleged use of Craigslist to solicit sexual partners and a computer forensic report [...]

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The University of Richmond law school will present its highest honor, the William Green Award for Professional Excellence, this Friday to Judge Roger Gregory of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Gregory was first appointed to the court in 2000 by President Clinton; President George W. Bush renominated him the following year and he [...]

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A former McGuireWoods partner has admitted violating securities laws by trading unregistered shares of client companies.
If that sounds more like a New York City crime than an item on a Virginia docket, it is. The defendant is Louis Zehill, who worked at McGuire’s New York office, where about thirty lawyers practice.
As reported by Bloomberg, Zehil [...]

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A freeze on filling judicial vacancies seems like pretty tame stuff compared with the steps being taken in Los Angeles to address California’s budget woes.
The county superior court is laying off 379 workers and closing 17 courtrooms, according to the National Law Journal.
That’s in the context of 5,400 workers and 580 courtrooms, which would [...]

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Audio recordings of federal court hearings may soon be available from a court near you, but you can forget about that eight-cent price tag used in a recent pilot project. Downloading a digital audio file from a court session will cost $2.40 through the PACER system under the plan approved today by the U.S. Judicial [...]

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When Judge Wilson ordered Abbott Laboratories to turn over selected e-mails to federal investigators looking into alleged off-label marketing of Depakote, we had to wonder – why was this high-level pharmaceutical drama playing out in Abingdon, Va.?
Abbott is based in Illinois. It sells the anti-seizure drug Depakote all around the world. The Justice Department is [...]

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Waivers on the fee caps for attorneys who represent indigent defendants will continue after all.
The Senate budget had proposed cutting $600,000 out of this year’s budget and eliminating the $4.2 million projected for each of the next two fiscal years.
The House budget maintained those amounts, and they survived negotiations among the budget conferees and have [...]

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An Abingdon U.S. District Court has ordered Abbott Laboratories to turn over e-mails of current and former top executives in a government investigation of health care fraud.
Abbott is under investigation for off-label marketing of its drug Depakote, approved by the FDA in 198 for treatment of bipolar disorder, epileptic seizures and migraines. The company purportedly [...]

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A West Virginia lawyer with a background in computer programming has put the rules he needs for court at this fingertips with four iPhone applications.
Robert Bailey of Charleston authored apps for the United States federal rules of procedure, the West Virginia state rules of procedure, the local federal rules for West Virginia and the [...]

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