The VLW Blog

Tysons Corner lawyer Brian F. Kenney has been named to a pending opening on the federal bankruptcy bench in Alexandria. He will succeed U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stephen S. Mitchell, who was named to the court in 1994 and who will retire Aug. 31. Kenney, who was appointed by the judges of the 4th U.S. Circuit [...]

[Read more →]

A former account manager and bookkeeper at a Virginia Beach law firm pleaded guilty today in federal court in Norfolk to forging firm checks totaling $567,075. Diana L. Farmer-Forston, 54, of Virginia Beach, forged the signature of a principal of Bennett and Zydron PC on 210 checks between July 2007 and February 2011, according to [...]

[Read more →]

The U.S. Sentencing Commission has given retroactive effect to its proposed permanent amendment to the federal sentencing guidelines for crimes involving crack cocaine. The action could make 12,000 federal offenders eligible to seek a reduction in their prison sentence. A dispropotionate number of those offenders were convicted and sentenced in the Richmond Division of the [...]

[Read more →]

A Virginia Beach lawyer has been indicted on federal charges related to the alleged theft of life insurance proceeds that were intended to benefit the minor children of a man who died in 2006. Brian Gay, 52, was scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Norfolk today, when the indictment was made public. The [...]

[Read more →]

An Alexandria federal judge ruled yesterday that the ban on direct political contributions by corporations to federal candidates is unconstitutional. Senior Judge James C. Cacheris said the logic in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year in Citizens United v. FEC compelled that holding. His ruling came in the context of criminal charges filed against [...]

[Read more →]

A federal jury in Richmond has awarded $212 million, including $200 million in punitive damages, to a Fredericksburg-area man who suffered severe medical complications from the drug Botox. Douglas Ray Jr. received an injection of the drug to treat a hand tremor and writer’s cramp. He alleged that complications from that injection resulted in total [...]

[Read more →]

Federal courts would keep running more or less as normal for up to two weeks if the government shuts down tonight, according to the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts. Non-appropriated fees would last for that period of time, but the courts would face “serious disruption” if a shutdown lasts longer, with individual courts following their [...]

[Read more →]

Jimmie V. Reyna, a partner in the Washington office of Williams Mullen, has been unanimously voted in by the United States Senate as Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Reyna led the firm’s international trade & customs group and served on Williams Mullen’s board of directors. Reyna also has [...]

[Read more →]

Another federal judge ruled today that the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. And U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson of the Northern District of Florida went a step further than his counterpart in Virginia, U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson in Richmond. He ruled that the entire act is [...]

[Read more →]

A federal jury in Norfolk convicted five men from Somalia today of piracy and several other related accounts stemming from an attack on a U.S. Navy warship that the defendants thought was a merchant vessel. It is believed to be the first piracy conviction in the United States in 190 years, according to a press [...]

[Read more →]