Virginia Lawyers Weekly VA Lawyers Weekly

The bribery trial of a former Virginia State Police detective has exposed tension between federal and state law enforcement teams and led a federal judge to conclude that the U.S. attorney made a “serious error in judgment” during the trial. ...

Virginia courts may not have felt the reptile’s strike, but judges are taking different approaches with the prospect of plaintiff’s lawyers armed with psychological jury appeals. At issue is the “reptile” litigation tactic: an appeal to jurors’ subconscious fears that ...

Tagged with: Augusta County Circuit Court Judge W. Chapman Goodwin Reptile Theory

A former real estate lawyer who gave up her license 15 years ago amid bank account overdrafts and a family crisis should not be licensed again, a Virginia State Bar panel says. Despite letters of recommendation and backing from an ...

A Virginia real estate agent claims state regulators are violating her constitutional rights with rules that ban spiritual messages on her mail and her advertising. Hadassah Hubbard Carter of Glen Allen has included religious content in her email signature and ...

The fight over the future of Charlottesville’s Confederate monuments led to the violent “Unite the Right” rally two years ago. Now, the same dispute has given rise to a First Amendment battle over a magazine article about supporters of the ...

Tagged with: Defamation First Amendment Free Speech

A Roanoke television station is defending a lawsuit filed by the only survivor of the 2015 on-air shooting that claimed the life of a reporter and cameraman. The suit, filed in Franklin County Circuit Court, seeks damages for the former ...

A judge’s discovery sanctions will hobble a seagoing security company in its bid for insurance coverage after its ship and crew were seized by Indian authorities. The sanctions include preclusion of evidence beyond the company’s limited discovery responses and an ...

Tagged with: Insurance Judge Theresa C. Buchanan U.S. District Court - Eastern District

A Fairfax lawyer who fell short on discovery and admitted he was unprepared for trial in a divorce case has been sanctioned $11,000 by a Fairfax County judge. The penalty was imposed on the lawyer, but not the client, based ...

Tagged with: Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge David Bernhard Lawyer Sanctions

Former federal prosecutor Jonathan Fahey says he will challenge Democrat Steve Descano in the November election for Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney. Fahey said his top priorities would be gang violence and the opioid crisis, according to The Washington Post. Fahey ...

A Northern Virginia legal aid office has filed a lawsuit attacking the business model of a Virginia immigrant bond security company. Libre by Nexus charges for GPS ankle monitors and a monitoring service so immigrants can be bonded out of ...