The VLW Blog

A Richmond Circuit Court judge has refused to allow an appeal of a pretrial ruling that barred “class action” status for a lawsuit filed by a college professor who says the state lottery’s scratcher games were unfair.
Virginia law ordinarily does not allow class actions, but Scott Hoover sought to represent other scratcher players through the […]

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When parties haggle over a debt, one of them may try to get the last word by making partial payment and claiming an accord and satisfaction.
In a new case of homeowner v. plumber, the Supreme Court of Virginia says that crossing out the words “Paid in Full” on the homeowner’s check was not enough to […]

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A law firm avoids liability on a claim of tortious interference with contract rights today because the plaintiff business failed to allege that the law firm intended to cause the alleged harm.
The ruling in DurretteBradshaw, P.C. v. MRC Consulting, L.C. tightens the standard for making a contract interference claim.
The defendant law firm was accused of […]

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Scott Hoover apparently will have to go it alone in his quest for reimbursement from the Virginia Lottery.
Hoover is the Washington & Lee University professor who challenged the state lottery system on its advertised odds for certain scratch-off games.  He claimed that he had no chance of winning the grand prize advertised on his lottery […]

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As evidenced by this article from the Rocky Mountain News, Virginia is not the only state battling claims that its scratch-off lottery games are unfair because tickets were still being sold after the big prizes had all been won. In addition to a lawsuit pending in Colorado, the paper says that a $20 million […]

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When Dr Karen Alldredge of Salem was bounced from her practice group of ER physicians, she did not sue her colleagues who voted her off their island; instead, she sued the hospital that, she claims, wrongly forced her colleagues to fire her. The Roanoke Times reports on the lawsuit against the Lewis-Gale Medical Center. The […]

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Lawyers’ business clients have used arbitration for years to resolve commercial disputes.
But there’s business, and then, there’s bidness.
Senior U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar had a case in Norfolk federal district court last month, Al-Haddad Commodities Corp. v. Toepfer Int’l Asia PTE Ltd. (VLW 007-3-147), that pitted an international commodities trader against an agricultural commodity […]

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