The VLW Blog

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 ticket.

Hoover’s lawsuit in Richmond Circuit Court demanded an $83-million state fund with a claims procedure to reimburse him and all similar scratcher buyers.  Yesterday, however, Judge Walter W. Stout III ruled that Hoover could not proceed as a representative plaintiff on behalf of other purchasers, according to a statement from Hoover’s attorney.

The attorney, John P. Fishwick Jr. of Roanoke, said Stout ruled that the case can go forward on Hoover’s individual breach of contract claim against the Lottery.

Virginia law does not provide for class actions.   In his lawsuit, Hoover sought to serve as a “virtual representative for similarly situated Virginia citizens.”

Judge Cleo E. Powell was sworn in formally this afternoon as the newest judge of the Virginia Court of Appeals. She had served previously as a general district and circuit judge in Chesterfield County.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine appointed her in August to fill the vacancy created by his elevation of Judge LeRoy F. Millette Jr. from the intermediate appellate court to the Supreme Court of Virginia.

The General Assembly is expected to appoint her to a full eight-year term in January.

By Alan Cooper

AP Photo by Stephen M. Helber

On average, a female equity partner in a law firm earns $87,000 a year less than a male equity partner, according to figures released today by the National Association of Women Lawyers.

NAWL says its 3rd annual survey is the only national study of American Lawyer’s AmLaw 200, a survey of the nation’s 200 largest law firms, that tracks the progress of women lawyers at all levels of private practice.

The data suggest that women have the most leverage when they make a lateral move, not when they try to climb the firm ladder.

Two-thirds of the new women equity partners in the survey sample were laterals, and 31 percent of all new equity partners were recent laterals, giving the lie to the “traditional notion that largely homegrown attorneys are promoted to equity partner,” according to the NAWL press release.

Although the evidence indicates that more recent women law graduates are being promoted to equity partner at “a somewhat greater rate … even in the best of circumstances, women are promoted to equity partner at only about half the rate as men.”

For a young female lawyer, the moral of the story may be: Develop your own book of business and then bargain your way out and up.
By Deborah Elkins

Did you get a nastygram from the Virginia State Bar in the mail last week? One that told you that you didn’t have enough CLE hours?

You’re not alone. I was one of the unlucky ones. But I was left pondering the VSB’s math.

According to the math I learned, 2 + 3 + 4.5 + 3 = 12.5.

That’s two carryover hours, plus the number of hours I earned this past year, giving me my required 12 hours, plus a half to carry into 2009.

But the nastygram said that 2 + 3 + 4.5 + 3 = 5. Say what?

I got a follow-up message from the VSB this morning, which said: “Please be advised that there was a problem with the program that created our Form 1, End of Year Reports, which resulted in some forms being printed with an incorrect number of total hours.”

Check the bar’s Web site, www.vsb.org, it continued. The site will reflect your correct number of hours and if it’s right, you don’t have to do anything.

Well, I checked that site last Friday after getting the nastygram and the onscreen total was correct. Glad to know they moved to get the word out fast, though.

By Paul Fletcher

The Virginia Supreme Court’s remand of a grandparent custody case has raised questions about who gets to award attorney’s fees, according to four judges of the Court of Appeals.

In its Sept. 12 opinion in Lynchburg Division of Social Services v. Cook, the high court ordered the Court of Appeals to send the custody case back to the circuit court for additional findings, that could include attorney’s fees for the grandparents.

On Nov. 12, the Court of Appeals dutifully remanded the case, but its published order included a concurrence by Judge Robert Humphreys, joined by Judges Robert Frank, Jean Clements and William Petty.

The Supreme Court, according to the concurrence, has “either inadvertently ordered the circuit court to do something that court has no authority to do” – award attorney’s fees for appellate proceedings – or it “has impliedly given the circuit courts authority that they never had before.”

The case had to go back to the trial court, the Supreme Court said, because the Court of Appeals erred in holding that the foster care plan statutes were subordinate to the general custody statutes. And the intermediate appellate court also goofed when it applied Va. Code § 16.1-278.19, which allows attorney’s fees for cases that originate in the JDR court, under a non-statutory standard the looked to the “reasonableness” of the legal position taken by DSS.

“Typically, when a lower court errs, as we did here, the case is remanded with instruction that the error be corrected by the court which erred….Here, the Supreme Court has departed from that precedent and ordered the circuit court to determine the propriety of an award of attorney’s fees for expenses incurred in the Court of Appeals,” Humphreys wrote.

Predicting “far reaching consequences,” Humphreys warned that under the high court’s analysis, “the more affluent party will invariably be required to pay the attorney’s fees of the other party in every JD&R case and at all levels of appeal, without regard to any other consideration.”
By Deborah Elkins

A topic today at the Virginia Committee on District Courts – ultimately carried over for further study – was whether to allow offenders who make an unauthorized turn at a crossover on a controlled access highway to pay a fine without going to court.

Juvenile and general district judges commented on the seriousness of the offense and its frequency, but it wasn’t an issue for General District Judge R. Larry Lewis from Lee County. “We don’t have roads like that in my district,” Lewis said.

By Alan Cooper

A lawyer who stole nearly $4 million by “settling” personal injury cases without the knowledge of his injured clients was sentenced today to 11 years in jail.  Stephen T. Conrad, 40, of Woodbridge, also was ordered by U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton to serve three years supervised release and to pay restitution to his victims.

The disclosure of Conrad’s case last year quashed opposition to a proposal to require insurers to notify claimants when sending settlement checks to the claimants’ attorneys.  That proposal is under active consideration by policymakers at the Virginia State Bar.

Conrad was accused in court documents of agreeing to settle his clients’ tort and workers compensation claims without the clients’ authority or knowledge.  He forged the clients’ signatures on release forms provided to the insurance companies and then pocketed the proceeds.  He would tell the clients that the claims were ongoing.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a news release that many of the mishandled claims involved serious inuries, “including spinal injuries, facial fractures, and, in at least one case, a leg injury that required amputation.”

Officials said they identified 255 victims of Conrad’s larceny, including his clients, insurance companies, and medical providers.  The total amount involved was $3,973,112, according to the prosecutor’s office.

By Peter Vieth

A Christiansburg lawyer who admitted forging legal documents and passing them off as genuine may avoid a lengthy prison sentence.

According to The Roanoke Times, a special prosecutor agreed to recommend no more than two years imprisonment in exchange for today’s seven guilty pleas from former attorney Gerard Marks.

Marks admitted to forging judges’ signatures on documents involving property easements, divorces and adoptions. 

Last month, with Marks’ consent, the Virginia State Bar disciplinary board revoked his license to practice law.

Posted by Peter Vieth

Attorneys who want to keep their names off of the soon-to-be-online list of lawyers in Virginia now can exercise their “opt-out” option at the Web site of the Virginia State Bar.

To keep your name off the online list, log in to the Member Login site in the upper right corner.  Go to Virginia Lawyer Directory Options and choose Opt-Out.  If you change your mind later, you can be included by choosing Opt-In.

According to the VSB, the online directory is scheduled to be launched on Jan. 6.  It will be accessible on the public area of the VSB Web site. Visitors will be able to access a lawyer’s name, firm, address, and telephone number of record by searching for the lawyer’s last name.

E-mail addresses will not be included in the directory.

Contact information for all Virginia lawyers is and has been publicly available from the VSB on a request basis.  A previous online directory was “opt-in” only and contained only about 3,000 listings.

By Peter Vieth

Word comes from the ABA Journal that times are so tight for the New York City-based firm of White & Case that the annual holiday party budget has been cut to just $250,000.  And, unlike last year, the revelers will have to get by without fireworks.

To keep matters in perspective, this is an international firm with around 2,400 lawyers.  Party planners expect 700 to 1,000 to attend.  That figure, however, probably will not include any of the 70 lawyers and 100 staffers whose layoffs were announced this week.

By Peter Vieth