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

Petitioners, a hibachi restaurant owner and the owner of an event venue, are not entitled to a writ of mandamus to obtain relief from various executive and public health emergency orders that the governor and the public health commissioner issued ...

Tagged with: Civil Practice Supreme Court of Virginia

The Supreme Court of Virginia, by a 4-3 margin, has agreed with plaintiffs’ lawyers that a lawsuit targeting the alleged negligence of a driver could be revived after nonsuit even though the plaintiff initially named the car’s owner and not ...

Tagged with: Justice D. Arthur Kelsey Justice William C. Mims Negligence Supreme Court of Virginia

The circuit court’s temporary injunction, which barred the mayor of Richmond from removing war memorials from their locations, is vacated. Overview Stoney, the mayor of Richmond, invoked his emergency powers to move various war memorials, “explaining the continued presence of ...

Tagged with: Civil Practice Supreme Court of Virginia

Where appellant, relying on a police report, named the wrong person as the defendant driver in a personal injury case, appellant was entitled to file a new complaint naming the correct person after the statute of limitations expired. Background On ...

Tagged with: Civil Practice Justice D. Arthur Kelsey Justice William C. Mims Supreme Court of Virginia

Where appellant sought a partition of a home she and her siblings inherited, the trial court correctly ruled that she could not obtain an attorney’s fee under the partition statute from her unrepresented siblings. Background In 2012, despite their deceased ...

Tagged with: Justice Cleo E. Powell Real Estate Supreme Court of Virginia

A divided Supreme Court of Virginia has acceded to a request from the governor to institute a second suspension of Virginia eviction proceedings. The new, four-week freeze was welcomed by legal aid housing advocates, but the court’s Aug. 7 published ...

Tagged with: Chief Justice Donald W. Lemons Coronavirus eviction Gov. Ralph Northam Housing Justice D. Arthur Kelsey Justice William C. Mims Supreme Court of Virginia

The Virginia State Bar Disciplinary Board applied the correct legal standard when reviewing and affirming the district committee’s determinations that an attorney violated the Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct and that he must refund some of the fee he charged ...

Tagged with: Attorneys Justice Teresa M. Chafin Supreme Court of Virginia

Where the trial court ruled that res judicata precluded appellant’s newly filed claim for damages in an easement dispute and alternatively ruled that the damages sought could not legally be recovered, appellant’s failure to present in its opening brief any ...

Tagged with: Civil Practice Supreme Court of Virginia

The Supreme Court of Virginia has rejected arguments that a Virginia State Bar penalty was based on no more than an embellished fee dispute, turning aside a lawyer’s objections to the bar discipline process. The result was affirmation of a ...

Tagged with: bar discipline Justice Teresa M. Chafin Supreme Court of Virginia