The VLW Blog

Roanoke County Sheriff Gerald Holt was today nominated by President Obama for U.S. Marshal for the Western District of Virginia.  Holt has been sheriff since 1992.  He announced his retirement last month.
By Peter Vieth

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U.S. District Judge Jerome B. Friedman of Norfolk will take senior status Nov. 30, The Virginian-Pilot is reporting.
Friedman has been on the federal bench since 1997. He was a Virginia Beach circuit judge when President Clinton tapped him for the seat.
The judge told the Pilot that he had notified the White House and courts [...]

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Justice comes with a big price tag for a group of ex-military types who sold 10 million gallons of U.S. fuel on the black market in Iraq.
U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton imposed a four-year sentence and a $66,500 forfeiture Friday for a former Navy officer convicted of helping to steal the fuel from a U.S. [...]

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The judges of the Western District of Virginia are inviting comments on the first-ever set of local rules proposed for federal courts in those parts.
Among other things, the proposed rules would require attorneys’ fee requests to be filed within 14 days after judgment.  Judges would be authorized to impose jury costs when a case settles [...]

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U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema is not letting a frequent filer patent company leave the courthouse quietly in its lawsuit against the national law firm Foley & Lardner.
Brinkema has set a hearing for Friday, Oct. 9, for SPH America to show cause why its lawsuit should not be dismissed with prejudice with costs awarded to [...]

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Former Page County Sheriff Danny Presgraves is expected to plead guilty to some of the charges against him in a wide-ranging indictment that included allegations of public corruption and sexual assault.
The Roanoke Times reports a plea hearing is set for Friday morning.  Neither side is saying what  crimes Presgraves will admit to at that session.
The [...]

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A bare bones slip-and-fall complaint filed in Amherst County Circuit Court has run afoul of stringent new federal pleading standards following removal of the case to U.S. district court.
U.S. District Judge Norman Moon yesterday cited the new federal pleading standards in dismissing Holly Branham’s one-page complaint for failing to describe precisely how store employees were [...]

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Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., has introduced legislation to roll back federal civil pleading standards to the relaxed approach used by courts up until two years ago.
In a reaction to what some have criticized as a subjective “plausibility” standard set in a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court case - and reinforced in May with the decision in [...]

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The New York Times has an analysis of the appointments by President George W. Bush to the federal appellate courts.
During Bush’s tenure, the percentage of appellate judges appointed by Republican presidents has gone from 50 percent to 62 percent, and 10 of the 13 federal appellate courts now have majorities appointed by Republicans, The Times [...]

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The Virginia NAACP has filed suit in U.S. District Court in Richmond demanding that the federal government be put in charge of the Nov. 4 election in Virginia.
The complaint, naming Gov. Kaine as a defendant, alleges that the state failed to prepare for an unprecedented turnout of voters in the presidential election.  The Associated Press [...]

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