The VLW Blog

A federal wrongful termination case noted in today’s Virginia Lawyers Weekly has been settled on undisclosed terms.
The case of Spicer v. Universal Forest Products, Eastern Division, Inc. (VLW 008-3-430) featured a stinging opinion from Magistrate Judge Michael F. Urbanski that blasted the defendant for sending a corporate designee to a Rule 30(b)(6) deposition without information […]

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As March Madness wanes, like a hoopster’s fadeaway jumper, indulge us please in one more basketball reference. We can’t let a good one get away.
Charlottesville’s U.S. Magistrate Judge B. Waugh Crigler already had decided to award fees to lawyers for Pacel Corporation in Calkins v. Pacel Corp. for its opponent’s violation of federal discovery rules […]

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Pretrial discovery can be a matter of strategy, and some lawyers even approach it as a game.
But one circuit judge in Norfolk isn’t pleased with what he saw as game-playing in a medical-malpractice case. In Oakley v. Warren, Judge Everett A. Martin Jr. reamed both plaintiff’s and defense lawyers, resorting to elementary school terms. […]

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What happens when a speaker leaves a voice-mail message for an attorney, whose recording device doesn’t shut off?
The message left on the machine can come into evidence in a real estate case, according to Loudoun County Circuit Judge Thomas D. Horne. In Pacific Century Development & Realty Inc. v. Wheatland Farms LLC (VLW 005-8-197), a […]

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A discovery ruling in a black lung case may have ramifications for protecting work-product and confidential communications in other kinds of litigation.
Elm Grove Coal Company was trying to overturn black lung benefits awarded to a retired miner named Ivan Blake. The two physician experts who supported Blake’s claim admitted that Blake’s lawyer might have […]

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