The Library

Virginia follows the American Rule regarding attorney’s fees, which provides that parties must typically pay their own fees and costs in litigation; a prevailing litigant cannot collect its fees from the losing litigant. However, there are some exceptions. For example, a governing statute might include a fee-shifting section. Or, the litigants’ contract might include a similar clause. There is also a judicially-crafted exception that can apply in fraud cases. The exception has its roots in the case of Prospect Development Company v. Bershader, a 1999 decision by the Supreme Court of Virginia. There, the Court largely affirmed the trial court’s […]

A coal company makes a promise to a coal miner: “We will pay you $30 per ton of coal you deliver.” The coal miner then delivers the coal, but the coal company pays the miner only $15 per ton. The coal miner then sues the coal company. Does the miner have a claim for breach of contract? For fraud? Or for both? As with so many legal questions, the (maddening) answer is: it depends. Virginia law has strived to draw a distinction between contract and fraud claims, for perhaps obvious reasons. Take the facts above. The company’s failure to fulfill […]

In July of 2020, the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry (“DOLI”) enacted an Emergency Temporary Standard (“ETS”) setting forth workplace safety standards relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. Virginia has now enacted a Final Permanent Standard for Infectious Disease Prevention: SARS-CoV-2 Virus that Causes COVID-19 (the “Permanent Standard”). The 58-page Permanent Standard, set forth in Section 16VAC25-220 of the Virginia Administrative Code, is effective as of January 27, 2021. The Permanent Standard applies to all employers in the Commonwealth, and supersedes the ETS. The Permanent Standard is based in large part on the ETS, and mandates appropriate personal protective equipment, […]

Minutes before midnight on December 21, 2020, in the first major COVID-19 relief bill since this spring, Congress passed a $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill in combination with a $1.4 trillion omnibus government spending bill. Key PPP provisions of the new COVID-19 relief bill include: A new round of PPP loans to small businesses. The new round of PPP loans contains revisions to prior borrower eligibility criteria, so eligibility for this new round should be examined by any interested businesses. Unlike prior rounds, initial language indicates borrowers will need to show a 25% decline in gross revenue for any 2020 […]

A Commercial Landlord’s Guide to Relief when a Tenant Abandons the Property Tenants come and go. Sometimes they go without warning. In an age of remote work, stay-at-home orders, and supply-chain delays, commercial landlords find themselves in a precarious position with tenants who threaten not to return or who just altogether leave. Of course, a landlord has available to it the traditional contractual remedies and those under the Virginia Landlord Tenant Act. However, there is another remedy often overlooked: the distress warrant. Given the severity and unique nature of the distress warrant, it is obvious why landlords infrequently rely on […]

A team of Gentry Locke litigators recently reached a settlement for $8 Million Dollars on behalf of a factory worker who was severely injured when her hair became entangled in the drive shaft and roller of the glue spreading machine she operated. The machine spun her hair around the shaft and roller, ultimately completely scalping her from eyebrows to the back of her neck and from ear to ear. Her life was saved by the Duke Medical Center but her injuries are permanent and debilitating. The claim we asserted on our client’s behalf was initially focused on the way the […]

The COVID-19 pandemic turned the world on its head just days after the 2020 General Assembly adjourned, all but guaranteeing that the General Assembly would reconvene for a Special Session sometime this year to reconcile the state budget and deal with the fallout from the outbreak. Since then, the murder of George Floyd created a sense of urgency around the need for police and criminal justice reform, producing a second set of issues to address. Governor Ralph Northam has now called the General Assembly back to Richmond on August 18 to take up both of these issues. At a broader […]

The 2020 Virginia General Assembly enacted significant changes to Virginia’s most widely used exemption statutes in Title 34. In 2020 Virginia House Bill 790, which becomes effective on July 1, 2020, the legislature expanded both the amount of and procedure for claiming what is commonly referred to as the “Homestead Exemption” by simplifying the procedure for debtors claiming those exemptions in a pending bankruptcy case. Currently the Homestead Exemption under section 34-4 of the Code of Virginia permits an individual (a “householder”) to exempt from creditor process real and personal property up to $5,000 in value (or $10,000 in value […]