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

There were two published opinions, but three published decisions from the Court of Appeals.  Because the decision was that the Court has jurisdiction over the rehearing en banc in Lundmark v. Commonwealth, now to be known as Lundmark v. Henrico County, it is the headline of the day.  To understand why a seemingly perfunctory procedural order is not only worth publishing, but is actually the lede for this blog post requires a little background. Lundmark was originally decided

The Court of Appeals of Virginia released two published opinions this week, both from criminal cases.  In Timothy James Suhay v. Commonwealth of Virginia, we get a unanimous decision from Judge Callins, joined by Judge Friedman and “Justice” Russell — of course he was still Judge Russell at the time the case was argued, but he has since been elevated to the Supreme Court of Virginia. Suhay appealed his convictions for three counts of electronic solicitation of a minor, in vio

This is a long post which, as a true pedant, I naturally started with some history that is mostly irrelevant to the story (but darn interesting from my point of view) and ends with some grammatical trivia. If you want the short version, skip the next five paragraphs. In the earliest days of the Republic, the United States Supreme Court had no regular meeting place.  Initially, the Court met in the Merchants Exchange Building in New York City. When the National Capital moved t

Readers of the Blawg of the Sage of Virginia Beach are familiar with the David-Goliath Index in which Steve Emmert reports of the win-loss record of the “little guy” (typically a criminal defendant or solo plaintiff in a contact or tort case) against the “big guy” (the Commonwealth or the well-heeled corporation or insurance company).  That may be something of an oversimplification of how the index is calculated, but it’s the general idea. Never wanting to appear unoriginal,

I am proud to say that in addition to being a “procedural geek,” I am also a “data geek.”  I am fascinated by looking at statistics about anything – discovering hidden (and usually meaningless) patterns and trends.  So when you combine appellate procedure and statistics, well, I am just happier than a pig in new slop. I have just finished compiling the raw data for the filings in the Court of Appeals for the first half of the year, and I am now manipulating the data to see wh

An event of some note occurred on July 28, 2022, but it received little fanfare.  Indeed, I am somewhat chagrined that I was not more vigilant in reporting the event as it was something that I have been anxiously awaiting.   What was the momentous event?  Nothing less than the first opinion issued in an appeal of right filed in 2022 where the Court of Appeals exercised the authority of Code § 17.1-403(ii)(b) and Rule 5A:27(b) to dispense with oral argument “because ‘the dispo