The VLW Blog

Chronic tardiness is not the way to win points with a judge. After a recent showdown in a federal court in South Carolina, the court and the offending litigant each came away with an appellate win. The plaintiff, who repeatedly showed up late to court and then cursed a judge after she left the courtroom, [...]

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A trial court turned the tables on a mother who claimed a father violated a protective order, and jailed the mother for lying to the court. The father foiled the mother’s attempt to have him punished by secretly videotaping his pickup of their child for visitation. The mother landed in jail for contempt after an [...]

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Add one more admonition to that list of things you shouldn’t do: Don’t steal the judge’s gavel. In the “what was he thinking?” category, this item has to take a prize. An Ohio man was caught on videotape as he appears to pilfer a gavel straight from a judge’s bench. Obviously unaware of surveillance cameras [...]

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Court personnel are on the front lines of customer service every day. So it’s nice when someone notices these public servants can’t always respond to the guff they can get when dealing with the public. When he got a summons to appear for jury duty in Norfolk Circuit Court, James C. Henderson went to the [...]

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A Norfolk man whose loud protest about a jury summons earned him a contempt conviction has been exonerated by the Court of Appeals of Virginia. James C. Henderson definitely did NOT want to serve on a jury. Summoned in 2009, he showed up at the Norfolk courthouse, making it clear to all in a loud [...]

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The Supreme Court of Virginia has overturned summary contempt convictions and jail terms for two Virginia Beach lawyers and their law clerk. The contempt findings arose during a felony jury trial in which law partners Claude Scialdone and Barry Taylor represented a client charged with offenses stemming from his online chats with a police officer [...]

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The Supreme Court of Virginia today exonerated two Hampton Roads lawyers held in contempt for presuming that Norfolk Circuit Judge Chuck Griffith would grant continuances in their clients’ criminal trials. Both lawyers – Ken Singleton and Gordon Zedd – arranged with the prosecutor’s office for the criminal trials to be postponed.  Both lawyers then told [...]

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The Supreme Court of Virginia will consider whether two Virginia Beach lawyers received proper due process protections when they were held in contempt in the course of a criminal trial. A case that began when lawyer Claude Scialdone offered a document of questionable authenticity in defense of his client has wound through a Court of [...]

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The other shoe has dropped. The Supreme Court of Virginia will hear the appeal of Norfolk lawyer Gordon Zedd, who was held in contempt for telling his client to stay home when a prosecutor agreed to continue a traffic case. The high court last month agreed to take up the similar case of a Virginia [...]

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The Supreme Court of Virginia has agreed to hear Virginia Beach attorney Kenneth L. Singleton’s appeal of his contempt of court citation. Singleton’s sin? He didn’t show up for court and told his client not to come to court either after a Norfolk prosecutor had agreed to continue his case. Then Circuit Judge Charles D. [...]

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