The VLW Blog

A few entries from the notebook after a couple of days in New York City, Gotham, The Big Apple…

The American Bar Association started its annual meeting in New York on Thursday and they say 10,000 attendees will be here at some point during the week-long do. In the early 1990s, the ABA was roundly criticized for taking political positions, virtually all with a leftward tilt. Take a look at this year’s schedule of meetings and you’ll notice they’re not shying away from politics, they just now include rightward-leaning speakers, even Republicans.

The long-running Brett Favre saga finally came to a close last week, and he’s heading from Green Bay to…here. He’s now “Broadway Brett” of the New York Jets.

Headline I wish I’d written, in the New York Post on the day the trade was announced: “Jet Favre!” Maybe it’s obvious, but I liked it.

Heroes come easy here. Went to the NY Mets-Florida Marlins game at Shea Stadium last night, and there was a guy with a green-and-white Number 4 jersey bearing the newest Jet’s name. If you kind of ignore the green-and-gold Green Bay striping, it really _could_ be Favre’s Jets jersey. Some guy with a table along 42nd Street probably has them available this morning.

Shea is a kind of a dump, but there is a gorgeous new ballpark, Citi Field, rising just next to it. Its brick facade and entrance are built on the model of old Ebbets Field. Some guy told me you have to pay $5,000 for a seat license just to get the right to buy season tickets. Guess that’s how you pay for all those bricks.

It was a beautiful night for a ball game. The Mets beat the Marlins, 3-0. David Wright and Carlos Delgado went yard, bringing up the so-cheesy-it’s-great Home Run Apple twice. Wonder if that Apple is moving next door.

Some stereotypes need to die: New Yorkers are not rude. In three days here, I’ve seen the following scenario at least three times. Obviously lost tourists look at their map or guidebook, then at the street names, then back at the map. Local approaches lost tourists and provides helpful directions and a friendly smile. That’s the way to kill ‘em, I’d say.

By Paul Fletcher

A soldier who prevailed in a dispute with his Arlington landlord won a significant victory for members of the armed forces in Virginia.

According to a news release from the George Mason University School of Law, the soldier was ordered to move to military quarters, but his private landlord was not cooperative when the solder sought to terminate his lease. The landlord not only failed to return the soldier’s security deposit, he counterclaimed for the balance of the rent due under the full lease term (as well as damages and attorneys’ fees).

Although Virginia’s Residential Landlord and Tenant Act protects service members when they are ordered on base, the landlord claimed that the protection provision did not apply because the soldier helped to arrange for the order to move on base.

GMU’s Clinic for Legal Assistance to Servicemembers (CLAS) took up the cause for the service member. At a hearing this week, Arlington District Judge Karen Henenberg rejected the landlord’s argument that the soldier’s involvement in obtaining “orders” to move into base housing was disqualifying under the statute.

According to the GMU release, Henenberg refused to read into the statute language that was not there. She noted that, especially where the landlord was aware of the statute, early termination is a risk the landlord assumes.

Henenberg also observed that if a tenant’s involvement in obtaining orders to move on base should make the statute inapplicable, that would be an issue for the General Assembly to address.

Henenberg ordered the landlord to pay damages under the Consumer Protection Act.

Avoidance of the landlord’s claim for rent, damages and fees, and the award of the security deposit and tenant’s damages, resulted in a victory for the CLAS client in excess of $13,000, according to the news release.

Posted by Peter Vieth

Michael Vick’s dogfighting activities have been a godsend to animal rights organizations. Animal Planet is the latest group to use his federal conviction as a vehicle to promote its activities. This press release describes its documentary on the case as the first installment of a new series called “Animal Witness.”

By Alan Cooper

Note to self: Don’t swipe a surfboard at the Cavalier Hotel in Virginia Beach when Virginia’s prosecutors are meeting there.

A couple of would-be wave riders apparently tried just that, only to run afoul of Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney (and surfer) Ray Morrogh.

We hear that Morrogh was leaving a Thursday afternoon meeting at the Cavalier when he spotted someone carrying his surfboard (a 9-foot Velzy) and challenged the man. In the ensuing scuffle, Morrogh suffered a broken foot, but gamely charged after the alleged thief and made the collar.

Two men and a teenaged girl are accused of attempted larceny. Morrogh regained his board, but lost the chance to use it this past weekend. He is on the mend with crutches, a boot cast, and new item on his resume.

By Peter Vieth

Author John Grisham, best known for his legal dramas, will be campaigning with fifth district Democratic Congressional candidate Tom Perriello today in Martinsville.

The Danville Register-Bee has details.

By Peter Vieth

Highway 220, the road leading to and from The Homestead, was covered with campaign signs for Mark Warner and Jim Gilmore in preface to Saturday’s VBA debate. Advantage: Warner.  

The more recent ex-gov clearly won the sign war up and down the highway. A couple of completely anecdotal observations:

Warner was out earlier. There didn’t seem to be any Gilmores on the road on Thursday afternoon as attendees at the VBA summer do rolled in.

Warner had more. Given the press reports about the size of the candidates’ respective war chests, that’s no surprise. Warner’s were bigger too (see the pic).

Warner went further north up 220 and further south down 220, almost to Covington.

Warner had a little “Warnermobile” tooting around town. Okay, it was a pickup truck with big signs. Gilmore had to hate that.

He had to hate this too: Someone had fashioned and posted a lot of “McCain for President, Warner for U.S. Senate” placards along the highway. Those disappeared from the side of the road quickly after the debate, for some reason.

By Paul Fletcher

A Roanoke federal judge has refused to set aside a jury verdict that found a trucking company negligent for hiring an inexperienced driver for a hurry-up delivery of a “hot load.”

That verdict, handed down in early May, may be founded on new law in the big-dollar, big-rig field of tractor-trailer litigation.

On July 7, U.S. District Judge Glen Conrad denied defendant C.H. Robinson Worldwide’s motion for a new trial. Prior to trial, Conrad ruled that the motor carrier broker could be sued for “negligent hiring of an independent contractor.” The judge said in his June 10 decision that no Virginia case had applied the negligent hiring theory in the context of a broker’s selection of a carrier, but he predicted the Supreme Court of Virginia would extend the claim to the negligent hiring of an independent contractor in this tractor-trailer accident.

In his July 7 denial of post-trial motions in Jones v. C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc., Conrad said that information available to the public should have tipped the defendant that the trucking company “had a propensity to hire incompetent, unsafe drivers,” and there was enough circumstantial evidence to show the driver’s erratic driving caused the wreck.

A bench trial on damages is set for July 21.

By Deborah Elkins

Former secretaries of state James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher are the big names associated with the National War Powers Commission, but the group that issued its report today on the interaction between the president and Congress on matters of war has a strong Virginia connection.

The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia impaneled the commission in February 2007, and W. Taylor Reveley III, interim president at the college of William and Mary, and John C. Jeffries Jr., professor and former dean at the U.Va. law school, were its co-directors..

The respective authority of Congress and the president on the use of force overseas has been a topic of interest for 40 years for Reveley. W&M’s office of university relations has an account of that interest, along with links to the commission’s report and other information about its work. The New York Times has an op-ed column by Baker and Christopher as well.
By Alan Cooper

The 4th of July weekend is coming, and many people will be traveling, but thanks to the price of gas, maybe not as many as in years past. This sign explains why:

The rule that the plan documents, not the summary plan description, control usually works to the detriment of long-term disability claimants in disputes with ERISA administrators.

Not this time. The SPD clearly gave Prudential Insurance Company of America the sole discretion to determine eligibility for benefits. But the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that no such language existed in the plan documents themselves. Worse for Prudential, the SPD language “demonstrates that Prudential knows how to draft language expressly reserving discretionary authority.”

The result in Woods v. Prudential is that the trial judge erred in reviewing the administrator’s denial of benefits under an abuse of discretion standard. The appellate court remanded the case for review de novo, a more favorable standard for the claimant.
By Alan Cooper