The VLW Blog

The Virginia State Bar and Suffolk lawyer Johnnie Mizelle were preparing for a disciplinary hearing before a three-judge panel next Monday when they reached a deal: Mizelle would consent to a five-year suspension of his law license to settle charges that he groped and solicited a number of female clients.

But the judges in the case did not accept the agreement immediately.

Only two of the seven women involved knew about the agreement with Mizelle, who is the former mayor of Suffolk. After a teleconference yesterday, the panel gave the bar additional time to contact the others. A different panel rejected a deal in February which would have suspended Mizelle’s license for three years.

The Virginian-Pilot has details.

Grundy native Lee Smith, the award-winning author who has chronicled life in Southwest Virginia in a number of novels, was back in her home region this week. She had a speaking engagement at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise.

She was asked about an effort to ban her novel, “Fair and Tender Ladies,” by the Washington County School Board. The novel details the life of a young woman in Appalachia and includes a short passage about her first sexual experience. Some of the words used are “crude,” prompting the school board to appoint a committee to review the book and determine if high school honor students should read it.

Smith told the Bristol Herald Courier that she was sorry to hear about the book-banning effort. The novel is “a love story to Southwest Virginia,” she said. “Fair and Tender Ladies” is an homage to the older Appalachian women she knew growing up, she added.

We’ve reported stories in the past about road hazards caused by stuff spilled on the highway. Concrete. Fruit. A load of eggs on the Beltway in Northern Virginia.

Here’s a new one: Chicken fat. If that sounds pretty gross, it was.

A tanker was carting chicken fat, a processing byproduct, from a Perdue poultry plant in Accomack County yesterday morning, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch, when about 3,000 gallons of the goop spilled on Highway 13. Apparently the driver failed to secure a hatch and the stuff sloshed on the road. He realized the mistake 20 miles later when he stopped at a weigh-station.

Chicken fat is brown and oily and smells like rotten chicken that you left in the fridge and forgot to cook by its sell-by date. For a couple of weeks. Imagine 20 miles of that smell. At 6 in the morning, a roadway covered with same looks like it’s drenched with rain, but it is as slick as wintertime black ice.

At least four wrecks were caused by the fat on the road, including one four-car crash that sent several people to the hospital with minor injuries. The highway department moved quickly to get sand down on the fat.

The tanker’s driver was cited for failure to maintain his load.

The idea of naming the new federal courthouse in downtown Richmond after Judges Spottswood W. Robinson III and Robert R. Merhige Jr. has been circulating for about two years, with a push from local bar groups.

Last October, Sens. John Warner and George Allen introduced legislation to secure the name, but it went nowhere.

Allen lost his seat to now-Sen. Jim Webb.

Warner’s office has issued a press release with much ballyhoo that he will introduce a bill next week to name the courthouse for Robinson, who served on the D.C. Circuit, and Merhige, a longtime U.S. District judge in Richmond.

The release doesn’t mention Allen or the failed prior effort. But it does tout that Webb has signed on. Warner and Webb have worked together on judicial nominees for the Old Dominion, with mixed success and cooperation from the White House. Stay tuned to see if they can jog their colleagues into passing the name bill.

Gov. Tim Kaine appointed Prince William Circuit Judge LeRoy F. Millette Jr. today to fill the Virginia Court of Appeals vacancy created by the retirement of Judge James W. Benton Jr.

Millette, who has a background as a law firm associate and partner, a sole practitioner and a state prosecutor, was named a general district judge in 1990 and elevated to the circuit court in 1993.

He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary and its law school.

Millette, 58, probably is best known for presiding over the capital murder trial of sniper John Muhammad.

“To me as a trial lawyer, temperament is the key, and Lee has always had that,” said John D. Whittington, a Prince William lawyer who tried cases against Millette when Millette was in private practice and has appeared before him after he was appointed to the bench. “He’s got the whole package.”

Property owners who lived near Chesapeake Airport have won the right to damages for noise and vibration that they say has ruined the once quiet, rural setting of their West Landing Estates neighborhood.

In operation since 1977, the airport completed its last runway extension in 1999. George and Margaret Osipovs bought their home in March 2001 for $246,600. The airport and its neighbors apparently co-existed peacefully until early 2003, when the airport began using instrument landing systems. The landowners complained about the increased frequency of landings and departures, and about the types of aircraft coming and going. The Osipovs said the ILS brought low-flying aircraft directly in over their rooftop.

After talks between the airport and surrounding property owners failed to produce the kind of mitigation the neighbors wanted, the Osipovs sued.

On Nov. 16, Chesapeake Circuit Judge Randall D. Smith rejected the owners’ claim of a taking under the Virginia Constitution, saying the Osipovs had managed to sell their home in 2006 for more than twice the 2001 purchase price.

But Smith said in Osipovs v. Chesapeake Airport Authority that the Osipovs are entitled to damages for a partial diminution in value from the significant increase in volume, frequency and vibrations from noise due to aircraft flying directly overhead.

The property owners’ claim for just compensation can be determined in a proceeding under Virginia Code § 8.01-187, Smith ruled.

The Osipovs’ case is the first of 12 companion inverse condemnation cases alleging taking and damage resulting from the airport’s expansion, according to Norfolk lawyer Joe Waldo, who represents the Osipovs.

President Bush has nominated David J. Novak and Mark S. Davis for federal judgeships in Richmond and Alexandria, respectively.

Novak is an assistant U.S. attorney who worked on the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the convicted Sept. 11 conspirator. Davis is a circuit judge in Portsmouth.

Both men were on the list of candidates submitted by Sens. John Warner and Jim Webb to the White House. The Richmond Times-Dispatch has more details.

Salem lawyer Chris Clemens has garnered endorsements from three Roanoke-area bar groups for a general district judgeship that will open next year after the retirement of Judge Julian Raney, reports the Roanoke Times.

The Roanoke Bar Association and the Salem/Roanoke County Bar Association have endorsed Clemens. The Roanoke Valley Chapter of the Virginia Women Attorneys Association found both Clemens and Roanoke Commonwealth’s Attorney Donald Caldwell to be “highly recommended.”

Nine candidates have expressed interest in the seat.

After literally years of debate and discussion, the Smyth County Board of Supervisors has approved a $24 million plan to renovate the county’s historic courthouse in Marion (right), reports the Bristol Herald Courier.

The action came on a 4-3 vote, with the the board choosing the most expensive of several options. But one member noted that the plan is a 20-year fix.

Judges and other court officials have been saying for years that they need better security and more space.

Board members were aware that the Supreme Court was looking at them. The board chairman said that if something hadn’t finally happened, officials at the court wouldn’t be shy about forcing the issue, as they had in other jurisdictions.

A circuit judge yesterday dismissed embracery charges against a Charlottesville lawyer, reports The Daily Progress.

Deborah C. Wyatt has been accused of improperly attempting to influence a grand jury. In December 2004, she contacted members of a grand jury investigating whether to charge one of her clients, offering herself as a witness. Prosecutors charged her with embracery, a common-law offense.

But Judge William H. Ledbetter Jr. said it would be a “grave injustice” for the case to go to trial. He noted that her actions were out of the ordinary, but not illegal.