The VLW Blog

Former Franklin County Sheriff Ewell Hunt was accused in a lawsuit of failing to prevent one of his deputies from gunning down his ex-wife. Now, the ex-wife’s family will get $900,000 from the state to settle the suit on behalf of the former sheriff.
Roanoke’s Matt Broughton, who represented the family, said the money will be [...]

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A Newport News circuit judge has entered judgment for $8.47 million in an asbestos case against defendant John Crane Inc.
In February, a jury handed down a $9.18 million verdict to the family of John Bristow, a retired shipyard worker who died from mesothelioma. The plaintiff claimed that Bristow contracted mesothelioma from working with John Crane’s [...]

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A man facing a life sentence for the murder of his wife has been hit with a record-breaking civil verdict arising from the same crime.
The $15 million verdict appears to be the largest wrongful death award handed down by a Virginia jury.
Peter C. Burnett and Jonathan B. Slater of Leesburg represented the family of Cacey [...]

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The Supreme Court of Virginia will be asked to review a hard-fought Charlottesville wrongful death case where the judge slashed a death verdict by more than $4 million and imposed a record-breaking sanctions award against a plaintiff’s lawyer.
Both sides have filed notices of appeal in the case of Lester v. Allied Concrete Co., according to [...]

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An Abingdon federal jury decided a child car seat was not defective, closing the door on a $50-million claim for damages for an 8-year-old girl who suffered devastating brain damage in a 2009 auto accident.
The jury deliberated about six hours before returning a defense verdict Monday evening.
Lawyers for Samantha Musick argued her skull was fractured [...]

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A Norfolk federal jury has rejected claims of an Alexandria lawyer that Twitter owed him $40 million for patent infringement.
A news release from the Troutman Sanders firm, local counsel for Twitter,  referred to attorney Dinesh Agarwal as a “patent troll.” Agarwal obtained a patent in 2002 for an “interactive virtual community of famous people.” He [...]

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A group of bondholders who got stiffed when a major German conference center project went bust have won a $96.4-million Alexandria federal jury verdict against a South Korean national who allegedly lied about backing for the bonds.
The jury found former McLean businessman Man Ki Kim committed fraud when he promised to provide money for a [...]

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Claims handlers take note: Juries have grown generous for personal injury plaintiffs in Campbell County.
The county has seen six straight plaintiffs’ verdicts, Circuit Judge John T. Cook told the Lynchburg Bar Association Wednesday. The total of the verdicts was $2.2 million, he said. That’s an average of more than $366,000 per claim.
Asked if he thought [...]

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A Newport News judge has set aside a multimillion dollar personal injury award on the grounds the verdict was excessive.
This past August, a jury awarded $5,225,000 to Michael Chavis, who was injured after a forklift ran over his foot at a Best Buy store. Chavis was diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome as a [...]

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A Charlottesville judge cut a husband’s wrongful death verdict by two thirds and ordered sanctions against the plaintiff and his lawyer in the aftermath of a hotly contested trial that produced a record overall jury award.
A 32-page order from Circuit Court Judge Edward Hogshire also refers Charlottesville lawyer Matthew Murray to the Virginia State Bar [...]

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