The VLW Blog

Here’s an item from the Tarheel State this a.m., courtesy of the Daily Alert from our colleagues at North Carolina Lawyers Weekly:

A lawyer down there has been suspended from practicing law in Wake County for a year, reports the Raleigh News & Observer. His offense: He cussed at a court clerk.

Lawyers here will recall that back in April, in the case of In re Moseley, the Supreme Court of Virginia upheld the power of a local circuit court to suspend or revoke a lawyer’s privilege to practice before it.

That’s basically what happened down in N.C. According to the N&O, a Wake County superior court judge found that a lawyer named Mark A. Key had sworn at a court clerk and walked away from a client before a hearing over a payment dispute. His privilege to practice in Wake was suspended for a year. The N.C. Supreme Court declined to take the case; Key said he will serve the suspension at an agreed-upon later time.

As noted in a post yesterday, the daily papers across the commonwealth are focusing on the new “civil remedial fees,” which provide hefty fines for bad drivers.

Here’s an update from today’s editions: Both The Daily Press and the Bristol Herald Courier have stories on the topic. And The Free Lance Star has an editorial.

The Roanoke Times didn’t have a remedial-fees story today. Instead, the paper had a piece on teenagers in the Star City and their reaction to another new statute that prohibits teen drivers from talking on a cell phone while driving. There’s a fine of up to $250 for the first offense; the driver can lose his/her license for six months upon a second conviction.

A defendant who submits to a DNA mouth swab in one case can’t prevent prosecutors from using it to solve a cold case, according to a new decision from the Virginia Court of Appeals.

In Pharr v. Commonwealth (VLW 007-7-239), the court said that use of the DNA didn’t violate the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights.

While the issue is one of first impression in Virginia, Judge Jean Harrison Clements wrote that the “overwhelming weight of authority” from other states supports the ruling.

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., has vowed to abolish federal mandatory sentencing guidelines, reports The Daily Press.

Scott, chair of the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime, held hearings in Washington this past week. The leading witness was a federal judge from Utah who noted that he was compelled by the guidelines to give a first-time offender who carried but didn’t use or display a gun during a drug deal a total of 55 years; later that same day he sentenced a murderer to 22 years.

Scott’s Republican colleague, Rep. Randy Forbes of Chesapeake, countered that while the sentencing system may have problems, it can be fine-tuned instead of scrapped.

As we noted on this blog in a post last month, the 2007 General Assembly set up a system to whack bad drivers with new hefty fines in the transportation bill.

Most of the new-statute stories in the general press before the July 1 effective date have focused on the new fees. See, for example, pieces in The Washington Post and Richmond Times-Dispatch.

The Supreme Court of Virginia must have been getting a lot of traffic at its Web site. The new civil remedial fee system has been declared a hot topic over there. The court provides a link to its useful primer on the new scheme, which we again recommend.

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court turned in rulings that, according to the pundits, indicate the court’s conservative five-justice majority is flexing its muscles.

Among other decisions, the high court voted to limit student speech in the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case, to toss an attempt by taxpayers to challenge the Bush administration’s grants to faith-based social services groups and to weaken corporate and union advertising restrictions under McCain-Feingold.

Today’s headline from the Lynchburg paper’s Web site: “Court upholds prisoners’ right to porn.”

Yet another new decision from the Roberts Court?

Not exactly. A quick click indicates that the case is from … Sweden. The Supreme Administrative Court in Stockholm has upheld a rape convict’s right to his hardcore girlie magazines. The ruling angered prison officials, who argued unsuccessfully that allowing the magazines will interfere with the inmate’s rehabilitation and could pose a risk for the prison’s female employees.

The Swedish prison system continues to bar pornographic movies, TV channels and Web sites, according to The Associated Press.

Richard A. “Dick” Williamson, a longtime law professor at the College of William and Mary, died last Friday, June 15. He was 63.

Prof. Williamson taught law at the school from 1970 until his retirement three months ago. He also served for a number of years at the college’s coordinator of legal affairs. In that role, he was involved in the school’s skirmish with the NCAA over use of two feathers in the college logo.

The Daily Press has an obituary.

The Virginia Association of Community Conflict Resolution, an organization for nonprofit community mediation groups, is trying to get the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles to issue a state license tag that promotes “community peacebuilding.” (See picture).

Considering the commonwealth already has vanity license plates that promote everything from Parrotheads (Jimmy Buffett fans) to bowlers to Friends of Tibet, community peacebuilding shouldn’t be denied, right?

Well, as the Roanoke Times reports, the plate-promoters are about 75 short of the 350 pre-paid commitments required to issue a new license plate. Rebekah Carswell, executive director of the Conflict Resolution Center in Roanoke, is spearheading the effort, which has been going for two years. If the group doesn’t get the 75 extra people by July 1, it will have to start all over. And next week, a new law kicks in that puts a 30-day deadline on any effort to get the 350 pre-payments. Carswell says it’s pretty much now or never for the peace plate.

If the tag makes it, the VACCR hopes to use the effort as a way to raise funds for local centers. Every driver who orders the tag will pay $25 for the privilege; the association would get $15 of that fee.

The judge in the $54 million pants suit in the District of Columbia announced her decision this morning: The defendants won. In fact, the judge ordered the plaintiff, an administrative law judge, to pay the court costs of the defendants, the owners of the dry cleaners that allegedly lost his trousers.

The Washington Post has the story, as well as the judge’s 23-page opinion dissecting the plaintiff’s case.

The state Board of Medicine has a backlog of disciplinary complaints that has reached 2,000 cases.

To whittle it down, the board will streamline its disciplinary procedures, reports The Associated Press.

Many of the cases in the glut do not involve a substantial risk to patients, such as advertising complaints. The disciplinary staff has been given the authority to dismiss those cases when there is not adequate evidence to go forward. Since 2004, violations of the appropriate rules were found in only 15 percent of these lower-level complaints, according to the board.

The Board of Medicine, which oversees physicians, chiropractors and other health professionals, is one of 14 regulatory boards under the Department of Health Professions. Gov. Tim Kaine, in his “Virginia Performs” initiative, has asked all boards to resolve 90 percent of complaints about patient care within 250 days. So far in 2007, the boards have met that goal about 40 percent of the time.