The VLW Blog

A doctor who claimed a hospital undermined her career by prodding her practice group to fire her won a $900,000 verdict from a Roanoke jury today, according to the doctor’s attorney.
Emergency room doctor Karen Alldredge sued Lewis-Gale Medical Center for alleged tortious interference with contract.  Evidence showed a hospital administrator referred to Alldredge as an [...]

[Read more →]

An outspoken emergency room doctor who was fired from her practice group last year has lost a chance for substantial damages from the Salem hospital she claimed subverted her career.
Karen Alldredge encouraged nurses who sought better working conditions at Lewis-Gale Medical Center.  Hospital administrators called her an “organizational terrorist” and made their displeasure known to [...]

[Read more →]

The U.S. Supreme Court says a jury needs court guidance when asked to award pain-and-suffering damages for a FELA plaintiff worried about getting cancer from asbestos exposure.
The Court, in a 7-to-2 decision, remanded a Tennessee case where the judge had rejected instructions that would have required the plaintiff, who suffered from asbestosis, to show that [...]

[Read more →]

A Wise County man pleaded guilty yesterday to burning down the High Knob observation tower.
According to the Bristol Herald-Courier, Nicholas Owens, age 23, was a volunteer firefighter when he and co-defendant Christopher Hyatt set the fires on Halloween of 2007.
The tower, which stood at an elevation of 4,162 feet, overlooked five states and was a [...]

[Read more →]

The plaintiffs’ bar is the winner today in a case where the defense sought to force a plaintiff to elect between a personal injury claim and a wrongful death claim for the estate of a man who died after acquiring an infection at the defendant hospital.
Because Virginia law allows only one recovery for an injury, [...]

[Read more →]

Personal injury defendants enjoy the protection of certain caps on damages in Virginia. At times, defendants have been able to invoke that protection sooner, rather than later, by getting trial courts to reduce ad damnum clauses to cap levels before a case ever goes to the jury.
But the Supreme Court of Virginia today rejected one [...]

[Read more →]

It looks so easy when they do it on Antiques Roadshow.
Experts on the popular public television series who examine stuff brought down from the attic appear to take their cues from certain elements of a painting or an objet d’art, and then fill in the blanks to come up with an estimated value.
But unfortunately for [...]

[Read more →]