The VLW Blog

The Supreme Court of Virginia has overturned summary contempt convictions and jail terms for two Virginia Beach lawyers and their law clerk.
The contempt findings arose during a felony jury trial in which law partners Claude Scialdone and Barry Taylor represented a client charged with offenses stemming from his online chats with a police officer [...]

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A trail of sexy phone messages and an overnight stay with a woman he met at his tennis club, plus the Viagra a husband kept in his truck, added up to adultery for a Madison County Circuit Court. The Court of Appeals upheld that finding yesterday in Davis v. Davis.
The girlfriend said the messages were [...]

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Although a wife didn’t earn income on her college degree until after the parties separated, she used her college loans for living expenses, and the Court of Appeals agrees husband must pay $11,000 of her college loan debt.
Yesterday an appellate panel upheld a Montgomery County divorce court’s property split that gave the wife equity in [...]

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A woman who lived with a child’s biological mother, whom she married under Canadian law, was not a “person with a legitimate interest” in visitation with the child, the Virginia Court of Appeals ruled today.
The child, born in 1996, was four years old when her biological mom and dad divorced. The child lived with her [...]

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A Danville lawyer who was a no show for oral arguments in two appeals before the Court of Appeals of Virginia has been publicly held in contempt and banned from practicing before that court for two years.
The court today issued a published order imposing sanctions on attorney Jon I. Davey.
According to the order, Davey failed [...]

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Judges and aspiring judges are still smarting over the General Assembly’s treatment last year of two members of the Court of Appeals up for re-election, according to a veteran of that court.
The 2008 legislative foot-dragging on re-election of Judge Robert Humphreys and Judge Jean Clements “has had significant consequences” for the judiciary and the judicial [...]

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The Virginia Supreme Court’s remand of a grandparent custody case has raised questions about who gets to award attorney’s fees, according to four judges of the Court of Appeals.
In its Sept. 12 opinion in Lynchburg Division of Social Services v. Cook, the high court ordered the Court of Appeals to send the custody case back [...]

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If you change the locks when your spouse moves out, be prepared to pay some rent.
In McIlwain v. McIlwain, the Court of Appeals today upheld an award to a wife of one-half the fair market rental value of a couple’s home for the six-year period after she moved out.
The Hanover County couple owned the jointly [...]

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Virginia Court of Appeals Judge D. Arthur Kelsey couldn’t help but imply that Robert Thurman Pilson might not be the best candidate for a home electronic monitoring program.
Not only was Pilson sentenced to the mandatory minimum one-year term for driving as an habitual offender, his criminal record includes convictions for escape, eluding police, resisting arrest, [...]

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The General Assembly appears poised to fill at least three judicial vacancies, but legislators are still scrambling to find a Supreme Court justice, an SCC member and judges in Hampton and Norfolk.
Likely to be appointed are Fredericksburg Commonwealth’s Attorney Charles S. Sharp to replace Circuit Judge John W. Scott Jr., who died in April; Stafford [...]

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