The VLW Blog

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 million [...]

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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. subsidiary, [...]

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A Norfolk federal court has awarded reimbursement for experts’ travel time to depositions, but at a rate that is half the hourly charge for time actually spent in deposition.
Senior U.S. District Judge Norman K. Moon, who sits in Charlottesville, was called to Norfolk to hear the federal government’s condemnation case involving 1.604 acres in [...]

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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 interpreter [...]

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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 of [...]

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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 that [...]

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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 two [...]

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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 refused [...]

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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 complaints [...]

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A federal wrongful termination case noted in today’s Virginia Lawyers Weekly has been settled on undisclosed terms.
The case of Spicer v. Universal Forest Products, Eastern Division, Inc. (VLW 008-3-430) featured a stinging opinion from Magistrate Judge Michael F. Urbanski that blasted the defendant for sending a corporate designee to a Rule 30(b)(6) deposition without information [...]

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