The Virginia Appellate Lawyer’s Court of Appeals of Virginia Blog

The Court of Appeals released just one published opinion this week. Rakim Malik Nottingham v. Commonwealth of Virginia involves two questions: First, whether the trial court erred in granting jury instruction, and second whether it erred in excluding a videotape of the victim’s interview and instead allowing the officer to testify as to victim’s demeanor during the interview. Any attorney should know that both issues involve matters of the trial court’s discretion — but an ex

This is not so much a “Soap Box” as it is a reflection on the concept of “thinking like a lawyer.”  This evokes the phrase heard by every law student that in Law School “You teach yourself the law, we teach you how to think like a lawyer.”  In truth, “thinking like a lawyer” is really nothing more (or less) than thinking critically about any topic.  It’s looking at the situation, identifying the facts you need to know, the terminology what you need to define, and the strength

I send a lot of emails.  I don’t mean that I personally send a lot to friends and family — my output in that region is pretty slim as we stay in touch via phone and zoom and social media.  I also don’t mean that I send a lot of emails in my professional capacity either; given that my practice is very limited and does not require a great deal of back and forth, I probably send fewer emails than the average attorney.  Nonetheless, I send a lot of emails, perhaps as many as 50,0

Today the Court of Appeals released one published opinion.  The question to my mind is “Why?”  Richard Roosevelt Hill v. Commonwealth of Virginia addresses what I thought was an issue of settled law – whether a circuit court retains jurisdiction to revoke a suspended sentence for violation of the terms of probation until the period of probation ends.  Well, the answer is it does, despite the creative effort of Hill’s attorney to assert that a court can have jurisdiction over

The Supreme Court of Virginia released one published opinion this morning. White v. Llewellyn is an interesting read if you find fraudulent conveyances of real estate interesting — I do, because it one of the few areas of the law where a prima facie case gives rise to a de jure presumption benefiting the plaintiff and, thus, the burden of production and persuasion shifts to the defendant (in most cases, the burden of persuasion always remains with the plaintiff).  I will not

So I have been retired from public service for just over seven months and I spent the first several of those months resting, avoiding COVID and just generally contemplating a future that would include the occasional appellate case that caught my fancy.  While I have actually taken on several appellate cases and even filed briefs in two of them, much of my dabbling in a “real law practice” has been confined to the trial courts.  Specifically, I have had four cases that were co

I missed getting analysis and discussion of last week’s opinions as I was busy doing other law stuff (an essay about which will be posted in this space anon), so I am playing catch-up this week.  In addition to the two opinions for April 27, we have one more from today, and I shall take them in chronological order seriatim (a favorite word of the Supreme Court of Virginia of late which simply means in the order they come).  In doing so, I promise that I have saved the best fo