The VLW Blog

Document custodians must track a mass of digital data, and are bound to overlook – or delete – documents that later are demanded in a lawsuit. But there are sins of omission, and sins of commission. Taking a sledgehammer to a work computer would be the latter. Alan Taylor, a “computer expert by trade,” first [...]

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The EEOC can obtain five years’ worth of job assignment records from a company that deploys as many as 45,000 temporary workers on a weekly basis, in a case alleging the company illegally discriminated when it refused to reassign a temporary worker who could not read and write English. When the agency took up the [...]

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The maker of a line of child car seats is on trial in Abingdon with a handicap — the court has banned any evidence about why the company chose not to add protective foam to the head area side wings of the car seat in question. In the trial, a seven-year-old girl is seeking $20 [...]

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It’s a hard-fought, high-stakes trade secrets case, with scads of pretrial motions and some two-dozen lawyers involved. A jury trial is set to start this week in Richmond federal court in E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. v. Kolon Industries Inc. DuPont sued in 2009, alleging Kolon, a South Korean company, and its U.S. [...]

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A hearing-impaired employee who sued Walmart for disability discrimination forfeited both her lawyer and her claim for damages when she lied about receiving mental health treatment. Stephanie Holmes worked four years as a stocker for a Walmart in Alexandria. She sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act, alleging Walmart failed to provide her with an [...]

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Lawyers litigating a patent suit can protect drafts of their expert reports under a new amendment to federal discovery rules, a magistrate judge for the Norfolk U.S. District Court ruled last week. An amendment to Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(4) extends work-product protection to drafts of expert reports and disclosures and to attorney-expert communications, both [...]

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A Charlottesville judge has ruled lawyers for accused killer George Huguely cannot access medical records of victim Yeardley Love other than a prescription for medication. Defense lawyers sought Love’s medical records, contending that heart problems may have caused or contributed to her death. After reviewing the records in camera, Circuit Judge Robert Downer ordered Wednesday [...]

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Interrogatory answers from the clinical psychologist who accidentally removed Seung-Hui Cho’s mental health records from the Virginia Tech counseling center have been released by his attorney. The discovery information from Robert Miller is posted online by The Roanoke Times .  The interrogatories were served pursuant to the lawsuits filed against state officials by families of [...]

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A discovery fight provoked strong language from an Alexandria U.S. District Court last week. Denise Montanile offered to sell vintage baseball cards on her Web site. Tom Botticelli thought he was buying six cards of early baseball stars for the $7,800 he sent to Montanile, but all he got was an empty UPS box. Montanile [...]

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In the tussle over hospital internal review documents, a Martinsville Circuit Court has come down on the side of a med-mal plaintiff. Plaintiff Emma Lucille Gravely sued Dr. Richard S. Perren, an emergency medicine doctor, who allegedly discharged her with a diagnosis of “acute chronic low back pain” after she visited a hospital ER with [...]

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