The commonwealth has the authority to remove a state-owned monument from state owned property. The monument is a form of government speech. To the extent that the document conveying the property to the state and a legislative resolution accepting the ...

Tagged with: Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn Real Estate Supreme Court of Virginia

The trial court incorrectly granted defendants’ motion to strike plaintiff’s malicious prosecution claim after weighing the evidence and making findings of fact without viewing the evidence in a light favorable to plaintiff. Overview Appellant Dill was mistakenly identified as a ...

Tagged with: Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn Personal Injury Supreme Court of Virginia

The circuit court correctly removed two brothers as co-executors of their mother’s estate and replaced them with a disinterested third party. The “strife and conflict between the brothers[,]” resulting in their inability to agree on even the most trivial matters ...

Tagged with: Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn Supreme Court of Virginia Wills & Trusts

Where plaintiff established a presumption of a fraudulent conveyance, the trial court erred by ruling that only the burden of production, but not the burden of persuasion, shifted to defendants to overcome the presumption. “On this issue of first impression, ...

Tagged with: Evidence Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn Supreme Court of Virginia

Where appellee revoked a trust, of which two of her children were trustees, and a New York guardianship court found that appellee was not an incapacitated person, the Fairfax Circuit Court incorrectly ruled that the New York proceeding collaterally estopped ...

Tagged with: Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn Supreme Court of Virginia Wills & Trusts

The trial court erred by retroactively applying a statute, which allows local authorities to erect war monuments and prevents such monuments from being moved or covered, to nullify appellant city’s measures to cover and move statues of Robert E. Lee ...

Tagged with: Civil Practice Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn Supreme Court of Virginia

Where the decedent’s will gave her son an option to purchase real estate devised to her three daughters at “fair market value” within one year of the probate of her will, the term “fair market value” is not a “sufficiently ...

Tagged with: Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn Real Estate Supreme Court of Virginia

Plaintiff taxpayers lack standing to challenge to challenge the local sheriff’s cooperation agreement with the federal government to enforce federal immigration laws. Their complaint does no more than identify a policy with which they disagree and then asserts that any ...

Tagged with: Civil Practice Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn Supreme Court of Virginia

A county’s machinery and tool tax assessment was not valid where the county enacted a tax increase coupled with a tax relief program that operated as a partial tax emption for some taxpayers. Background International Paper owns a plant in ...

Tagged with: Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn Supreme Court of Virginia Taxation

Even though the family of a patient who died of surgery complications settled a Kentucky personal injury claim against providers in that state, the family can still sue Virginia providers in a Virginia court for wrongful death. The claim is ...

Tagged with: Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn Medical Malpractice Personal Injury Supreme Court of Virginia