The VLW Blog

The second annual Legal Food Frenzy starts Monday and runs through April 11.

The competition among law firms for the Attorney General’s Cup is aimed at raising a million pounds of food, a substantial increase over the 679,000 pounds raised last year.

The drive is being coordinated by the Young Lawyers Division of the Virginia Bar Association and regional foodbanks in the state.

Attorney General Bob McDonnell has issued a statement supporting the competition that includes Web links to the foodbanks.

Attorney General Bob McDonnell has filed papers for the state to intervene in the Episcopal Church case in Northern Virginia.

The case, tried last fall, pits the diocese against 11 congregations that want to break away; millions of dollars in church property hangs in the balance. McDonnell said that since the constitutionality of a state statute was challenged in the case, the commonwealth needs to be a party.

The Washington Post has details.

The attorney general’s office is sponsoring a legislative fix to a problem that it doesn’t believe really exists.

The issue is the practice of having nonlawyers sign motions to hold in contempt parents who are delinquent in their support obligations.

Kimberly J. Daniel, a juvenile and domestic relations district judge in Fairfax County, ruled in October that Virginia Code § 8.01.271.1 requires such pleadings to be signed by an attorney.

A logical extension of that ruling, and one pressed unsuccessfully in a federal lawsuit last year, is that thousands of such orders are unenforceable because they are void ab initio.

A more practical problem is that those nonlawyer employees could be guilty of practicing law without a license, said Craig M. Burshem, a senior assistant attorney general who represents the Department of Child Support Enforcement. That’s a risk he is unwilling to run, he said.

Although he said he disagrees with Daniel’s ruling, he has directed that an attorney sign all such motions.

As a permanent fix, the office has asked Del. Sal R. Iaquinto, R-Virginia Beach to introduce House Bill 1382, which would amend Virginia Code § to 16.1-260 and related statutes to make it clear that nonlawyers can file such motions.

Yesterday, the American Bar Association renewed its call for a nationwide moratorium on use of the death penalty; the group issued a report based on several states’ experience, calling the system “deeply flawed.” Virginia was not one of the states studied.

Through a spokesman, Attorney General Bob McDonnell says he disagrees with the ABA study, adding that the death penalty is constitutional and that the system works.

As a practical matter, there has been a general freeze in executions across the country since Sept. 25, when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of a Kentucky man challenging lethal injections as cruel and unusual punishment.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch has the story.

Attorney General Bob McDonnell has recived national exposure for his program to keep children safe from Internet predators.

The spot broadcast on the CBS Evening News and on the CBS Morning Show features Assistant Attorney General Rusty McGuire talking to a eighth-grade class about the danger of too much information on such social networking sites as myspace.com.

You can watch the spot, athough you’ll have to endure a 20- or 30-second commercial that proceeds it.

Gov. Tim Kaine and Attorney General Bob McDonnell announced yesterday that they have agreed to have an outside law firm advise the special review panel studying the Virginia Tech shootings.

Spokesmen for the two officials said that the AG’s office has been advising the panel, but it also has been providing counsel to Virginia Tech and the state police. Since the review panel is independent, it made sense for the group to have outside counsel, they said.

Two partners from the DC office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP – Richard Brusca and Amy Sabrin — will be the lead partners for the project, which Skadden, Arps will handle work on a pro bono basis, according to The Associated Press.

Virginia Solicitor General William E. Thro unsuccessfully asserted the sovereignty of the commonwealth in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the appeal of a lesbian mother who is attempting to sever the parental rights of her former partner.

In an amicus brief in the case of Miller-Jenkins v. Miller-Jenkins, Record No. 06-1110, Thro cited four reasons the high court should hear the case: to reaffirm the sovereign power of the states over domestic relations, to reaffirm the public policy exception to the Full Faith and Credit Clause, to reaffirm the limits on congressional power to enforce the Constitution, and to provide guidance on the application of the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act in the context of same-sex unions.

The couple left Virginia to get a civil union in Vermont in 2000. Lisa Jenkins-Miller was artificially inseminated in Virginia, and the couple moved to Vermont for a time before they separated and Lisa Jenkins-Miller returned to Virginia. She filed in Vermont to have the union dissolved and courts there awarded Janet Jenkins-Miller visitation rights.

Lisa then filed suit in Virginia to have the Vermont order invalidated as contrary to Virginia’s public policy against same-sex unions and adoptions. The Virginia Court of Appeals ruled that Vermont had jurisdiction over the custody case and that the parental kidnapping act controlled. That ruling is on appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the appeal from Vermont with no further comment.