The VLW Blog

The Bank of America is asking a federal judge to block Donald Trump’s claimed right-of-first-refusal to buy the embattled Albemarle House mansion near Charlottesville. Trump owns the front yard and other nearby properties formerly controlled by heiress Patricia Kluge, who has given up millions in assets after declaring bankruptcy in June. Trump says his claimed [...]

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A Norfolk federal court has awarded reimbursement for experts’ travel time to depositions, but at a rate that is half the hourly charge for time actually spent in deposition. Senior U.S. District Judge Norman K. Moon, who sits in Charlottesville, was called to Norfolk to hear the federal government’s condemnation case involving 1.604 acres in [...]

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A Fairfax Circuit judge has ordered a Northern Virginia lawyer and his client to pay the attorneys’ fees and costs of two defendants they sued in a residential real estate tangle. Total price tag: About $272,000. Judge Jonathan C. Thacher called the litigation “vindictive” and chided the lawyer and client for taking a claim to [...]

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A Loudoun County homeowners association was required to arbitrate a dispute with property owners over whether the owners could install a basketball goal on their property, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled today in an unpublished order. The property owners contended that the dispute was subject to arbitration under the plain language of the declaration [...]

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Montgomery County today filed suit in Richmond Circuit Court challenging the constitutionality of the state’s public funding of a planned intermodal rail facility.  The complaint is here.  In a news release, county leaders lay out their case for opposition to the project.  According to the county, the state funding plan violates two sections of the [...]

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Lawyers who follow the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals know the Richmond-based court is not generous with published opinions. According to a cover story in the June 2008 ABA Law Journal, the court, which has been short-handed for years, issued the lowest percentage of published opinions of all federal circuits in 2006 – 6 [...]

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Property owners who lived near Chesapeake Airport have won the right to damages for noise and vibration that they say has ruined the once quiet, rural setting of their West Landing Estates neighborhood. In operation since 1977, the airport completed its last runway extension in 1999. George and Margaret Osipovs bought their home in March [...]

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It was a good day in the Supreme Court of Virginia for the holders of big verdicts. The court affirmed seven-figure judgments in four cases with nothing in common other than the size of the awards. In Commonwealth Transportation Commissioner v. Target Corp., the court upheld an award of $3.3 million in damages to the [...]

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