The VLW Blog

U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson promised a decision within 30 days on whether Virginia has standing to challenge the federal health care law.
The judge heard about two hours of arguments today on the federal government’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.
“From time to time it’s up to the states [...]

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Attorney General-elect Ken Cuccinelli has named Williams Mullen partner and former federal prosecutor Chuck James to be chief deputy attorney general and McGuireWoods partner E. Duncan Getchell Jr. to be solicitor general.
James is the son of Kay Cole James, former director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under President Bush and Virginia Secretary of [...]

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Virginia health care plans will recover nearly $12 million under the nation’s largest ever health care settlement announced today, reports the state’s attorney general.
Bill Mims said Virginia’s total federal and state Medicaid recovery under the government’s agreement with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. is nearly $12 million, with $6.2 million being returned to the Commonwealth for [...]

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For the first time, a Virginia gas station has refused to settle a claim by the state that it overcharged customers during a hurricane emergency.
The attorney general’s office today announced it has filed suit against Main Street Citgo in Salem, claiming prices as high as $5.349 for regular in September 2008 were unconscionable.  At the [...]

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An allegation of an ethical violation by the director of the capital litigation unit for the Virginia attorney general’s office has been dismissed at the request of the lawyer appointed to prosecute the case.
The charge against Katherine Baldwin Burnett stemmed from a letter drafted more than a decade ago that the AG’s office suggested that [...]

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A gasoline retailer in the New River Valley has agreed to cough up $4,000 to settle a complaint that it engaged in price gouging as Hurricane Ike drove up gas prices last summer.
Bucko’s Pantry stores in Radford and Dublin charged as much as $5.799 for regular on Sept. 12, according to a news release from [...]

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At a Roanoke forum last evening, each of the three candidates for the Republican nomination for attorney general sought to show why he was the most likely to triumph in the November election.  Ken Cuccinelli, John Brownlee, and Dave Foster spent an equal amount of time establishing their conservative credentials before a crowd of about [...]

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Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell will resign that job to concentrate on his campaign for governor, reports say.  The Virginian-Pilot says McDonnell announced his plan in an e-mail to staffers this morning.  He reportedly expects chief deputy Bill Mims to be appointed to serve the remainder of his term as AG.
Because the General Assembly is [...]

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Some of the $19 million in settlement money from the maker of the painkiller OxyContin is going to drug treatment and education programs in Southwest Virginia.
As reported by the Associated Press, more than $650,000 is being distributed, most of it for treatment of residents dependent on opiate-based drugs such as OxyContin.
The money comes from settlement [...]

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Roanoke attorney John P. Fishwick Jr. today announced he will not run for the Democratic nomination for Virginia Attorney General.
In a news release, Fishwick said “I have concluded that for now my role should remain in the aggressive private practice of law, fighting against injustice and for people whose lives and livelihood depend on that [...]

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