Virginia Lawyers Weekly VA Lawyers Weekly
The news last week that the government will kick Andrew Jackson off the 20-dollar bill and replace him with Harriet Tubman was big. Changing personnel on the nation’s currency doesn’t happen often, but it’s not unprecedented. Jackson has been on ...
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Support based on ‘injustice’ reversed 
April 8, 2016
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The Virginia Court of Appeals has reversed, apparently for the first time, a spousal support award that was based on the “manifest injustice” exception in the Virginia Code. Virginia Code §20- 17.1(B) permits a trial judge to award spousal support ...
Tagged with: Domestic Relations Judge James W. Haley Jr. Virginia Court of Appeals
Read More »Arbitration of suit turns on online acceptance
April 1, 2016
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A Roanoke woman’s employment lawsuit against her former employer may be headed to arbitration. Or it may not. Whether she accepted the company’s job offer through an online portal is a question of fact, said the judge, who will hold ...
Tagged with: Employment Judge Michael F. Urbanski
Read More »Newman named Fellow of College of Comp Lawyers
Commissioner R. Ferrell Newman of the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission has been inducted as a Fellow of the College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers. The group held its annual meeting in New Orleans last month. The college honors attorneys who have ...
Tagged with: Virginia Workers' Compensation Commission
Read More »Fakin’ it
A Pennsylvania woman spent nearly 10 years posing as a lawyer in a rural Pennsylvania county, handling estates work, despite the fact she never went to law school. She was a partner at a law firm, making a $100,000 buy-in ...
Read More »Collection agency can’t just add interest to debt
Three former tenants of an Annandale apartment complex can sue a collection agency for a Fair Debt Act violation after the agency sought to add interest to their alleged balance due, an Alexandria federal judge has ruled. The three plaintiffs ...
Tagged with: Judge Leonie Brinkema
Read More »Emails, calls, work done in Roanoke = jurisdiction
March 4, 2016
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A Virginia-based consultant seeking to get paid can sue a New York developer in Roanoke federal court, even though the developer never set foot in the commonwealth, a federal judge has ruled. The parties exchanged “hundreds” of emails over the ...
Tagged with: Judge Michael F. Urbanski
Read More »Phone call to keep beneficiary didn’t ‘comply’
Where a dying man called his life insurance company to verify that he could keep his ex-wife as his beneficiary and was assured by an operator that he did not need to complete any more paperwork, the phone call did ...
Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ellis
Read More »Fraudulent joinder argument fails…twice
Retail stores in two separate cases in federal court, one in Richmond and the other in Norfolk, have failed in their efforts to keep personal injury claims against them in federal court. It’s textbook civil procedure that to sue in ...
Tagged with: Civil Procedure Federal Courts Judge Robert E. Payne Personal Injury
Read More »Under the hood of data security
What does the Supreme Court of Virginia want lawyers to be doing about technology and office data security? Look to the fine print of a new comment to a court rule for guidance. The court recently adopted amendments to the ...
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