The VLW Blog

A judge has overturned a jury’s awards totaling $101,000 based on gender discrimination claims against Virginia Tech.
Roanoke U.S. District Judge James Turk ordered a new trial holding the trial evidence showed Virginia Tech paid fund-raising employees based on experience rather than gender.
The two women plaintiffs both worked at Tech’s Office of University Development from [...]

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Does anyone still use a phone book to look up a number?
Apparently they did in 2004, because more than 350  complaints came rolling in to the State Corporation Commission when a multitude of errors appeared in Verizon telephone books in Virginia.
Now, six years and 80 audits later, the SCC is closing the books on its [...]

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North Carolina is one of the few remaining states with “heart balm” laws, allowing spurned spouses to recover big bucks as victims of  adultery.
The latest example pits an assistant prosecutor against a family lawyer. The two women had been friends for years. The family lawyer even stood as godmother to the prosecutor’s children.
In a “criminal [...]

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Almost all the states in the nation, including Virginia, are turning out more lawyers than they need, according to a new study.
The New York Times reports that there were nearly twice as many lawyers who passed the bar than there were job openings, according to a nationwide study conducted by Economic Modeling Specialists Inc.
EMSI [...]

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A Republican appointee joined a Democratic appointee Wednesday for a 2-to-1 panel decision upholding the federal health care law in the first ruling on the program from a federal appeals court.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals delivered the victory for the Obama administration, affirming the decision of a federal judge in Michigan. Two related [...]

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The Virginia Supreme Court panel studying proposed new judicial circuits and districts has announced details of the six public comment sessions it will hold in July. The first meeting, in Abingdon, is set for Thursday, July 7.
The full meeting schedule is as follows:
Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 6:00 p.m. – Far Southwest Virginia
Learning Resource Center, [...]

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A Charlottesville lawyer plans to run as a Republican for the seat of state Sen. Creigh Deeds. Elsewhere, two incumbent commonwealth’s attorneys announce bids for re-election.
“T.J.” Aldous, the Charlottesville lawyer, described himself as a “committed conservative” as he told The Daily Progress he hopes to unseat Deeds, D-Bath County, who’s been in office since 2001. [...]

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Victims’ families confronted the defense lawyer after a Norfolk jury acquitted a sailor of manslaughter charges in a wreck that killed two people and hurt two others.
Video from station WTKR shows the father of one of the victims yelling at attorney Andrew Sacks and kicking his stack of files as he tried to give a [...]

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A $23-million verdict for a man severely injured in a highway truck crash has survived post-trial motions in Richmond Circuit Court.
Circuit Judge Melvin Hughes denied defense motions to set aside or reduce the award, Richmond lawyer Chris Guedri said. Guedri, who represented the plaintiff, said the Supreme Court of Virginia is likely to be asked [...]

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A Virginia trial judge has no “inherent authority” to reduce a felony to a misdemeanor after he found the defendant guilty of grand larceny in a bench trial, the Virginia Court of Appeals said today.
The defendant was hoping for a different result in light of the recent Virginia Supreme Court decisions in Moreau v. [...]

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