The VLW Blog

Is that a gun in your purse or are you just happy to see me?
No, that’s not what a police officer said when he approached a woman near a Montgomery County, Md., high school the day after a gang-related stabbing in a supermarket parking lot a couple of miles away. A police gang unit suspected [...]

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Doctors who seek to avoid med-mal liability by petitioning to get a case before Virginia’s birth-injury compensation program can’t collect legal fees from the program.
In a Nov. 22 decision in In re: Subham Patel, the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission reversed fee awards to lawyers for a physician and her practice group, and lawyers for Bon [...]

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A federal jury in Norfolk convicted five men from Somalia today of piracy and several other related accounts stemming from an attack on a U.S. Navy warship that the defendants thought was a merchant vessel.
It is believed to be the first piracy conviction in the United States in 190 years, according to a press release [...]

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Breaking with other Virginia federal judges who have considered the issue, Roanoke U.S. District Judge Samuel Wilson has decided the stricter “plausibility” standard used to judge civil complaints does not apply to affirmative defenses.
The ruling may be cold comfort for a defendant in a contract dispute case where Wilson tossed the party’s counterclaims and most [...]

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Insurance companies and lawyers fearful of unexpected Medicare demands for repayment for personal injury claims have another year to breathe easier.
Enforcement of the Medicare Secondary Payer reporting rules has been delayed to Jan 1, 2012, the Department of Health & Human Services has announced. Those rules require attorneys, insurers and even plaintiffs to report any [...]

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The DEA is not waiting for the legislative process to take action against synthetic marijuana.
While legislators in Virginia and around the country have been drafting bills to ban the chemical pot, sold legally under names like “Spice” and “K-2,” the DEA announced Wednesday it’s using its emergency scheduling authority to “temporarily control” five chemical structures [...]

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It’s a Thanksgiving tradition for Monica Chernin.
For the past three years, the Culpeper attorney has collected hundreds of pies to hand out to less-fortunate residents as part of the annual Thanksgiving Food Basket, reports the Culpeper Star-Exponent.
This past Monday, Chernin filled her downtown law office with nearly 470 donated pies. Residents with vouchers from the [...]

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A teenage girl may have had something else in mind when she sent sexy photos to her boyfriend’s cell phone. Now he has a record for possession of child pornography.
Donald Kellison, who was 21 years old when he got the photos, was convicted of possession for three cell phone pictures sent to him by [...]

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A lawyer trying to locate evidence to bolster his lending fraud case stepped over the line when he met with a witness that he knew was represented by counsel in a related matter, a federal judge has ruled.
The evidence obtained by Michigan lawyer David Binkley – in part through a clandestine meeting in a Myrtle [...]

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A Williamsburg grand jury has returned an indictment charging patent attorney Bambi Walters with practicing law without a license, according to the local prosecutor.
Williamsburg/James City County Commonwealth’s Attorney Nate Green said the charge resulted from a Virginia State Bar investigation. VSB Counsel Ned Davis confirmed his office had turned over results of its investigation to [...]

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