The VLW Blog

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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This paper has reported on some high-dollar med-mal cases involving Caesarean sections, but an unpublished 4th Circuit case out of Roanoke offers a new twist.
Nickeshia M. Lawrence sued Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital for medical malpractice in failing to perform a Caesarean section when she was giving birth to her son.
After a five-day trial, the jury [...]

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Virginia’s two Democratic U.S. senators invoked the name of Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell today in urging their Senate colleagues to act on the nomination of Virginia Supreme Court Justice Barbara Keenan for the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Sens. Jim Webb and Mark Warner noted that Keenan has been a trailblazer for women lawyers and [...]

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A Richmond federal prosecutor crossed a line during closing argument in a weapons trial when she told the jury that two government witnesses “told the truth,” the 4th Circuit says. Federal precedent says it is improper for a prosecutor to vouch for or bolster testimony of a government witness by offering a personal belief in [...]

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The 4th Circuit has set aside a $10 million punitive damage award in a race discrimination case that was the largest verdict reported in 2008 in Virginia Lawyers Weekly.
In its Feb. 12 decision in Worldwide Network Services LLC v. DynCorp Internat’l LLC, the appellate panel upheld the jury award of $5 million in compensatory damages [...]

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A real estate agency is not vicariously liable for a $36 million judgment entered against its affiliated broker whose car struck a German couple riding a motorcycle in Fauquier County in 2005.
Although broker Charles Ebbets was on his way from a property inspection to the Long & Foster real estate office, he was not acting [...]

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In other Virginia cases decided this week by the 4th Circuit in unpublished opinions:
In a case arising from a fatal workplace assault at a Harrisonburg home medical services company, the 4th Circuit, in Admiral Ins. Co. v. Ace American Ins. Co., upheld a federal district court decision that a CGL carrier who participated in a [...]

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Remember the infamous McDonald’s hot coffee case from the 1990s? Virginia has been brewing its own burn case against McDonald’s since 2005, and now the 4th Circuit has ordered a new trial for a man who alleges burns from fast food.
Boasting its own Wikipedia entry, the hot-coffee incident at an Albuquerque McDonald’s in 1992 [...]

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A drug defendant’s statements to a private security guard need not be suppressed, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court said last Friday, reversing a Richmond federal district court’s suppression order.
Virginia’s system of state regulation of private security guards through Virginia Code § 9.1-146 does not necessarily mean the guards were acting as state agents when they [...]

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The 4th Circuit is no fan of the Laffey matrix, a scale used to award attorney’s fees in the metropolitan Washington D.C. area.
But the court said in a new federal workers’ comp case that the matrix could be a starting point for awarding fees to a D.C. lawyer who won LHWCA benefits for nuclear [...]

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