When a contract provided for the breaching party to pay the non-breaching party’s “legal costs,” the Fourth Circuit determined that attorneys’ fees were not included within this term.  The February 19, 2013 Fourth Circuit decision which vacates the District Court’s calculation of “legal costs” is Traxys North America v. Concept Mining Incorporated. The dispute involved a coal contract which stated that the breaching party would be obligated to pay “legal costs incurred by [the non-breaching]

In an unpublished decision last week, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld summary judgment dismissing a plaintiff’s claims for failure to accommodate, discriminatory termination and retaliatory termination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). Emergency room nurse Vivienne Wulff alleged that her employer Sentara Healthcare, Inc. violated the ADA  when it took her off the active work schedule due to a form she had submitted regarding her ability to work that listed a total

Just because “Virginia is for Lovers” doesn’t mean that our it welcomes trysts “al fresco.” What does it really mean to be “exposed” in “public” anyway?  For the purposes of three Virginia laws, the answer is the difference between innocent behavior and a crime. Indecent Exposure is a crime set forth in Virginia Code sec. 18.2-387.  Under this law, it is illegal to make an obscene display of his private parts “in any public place,

The passenger of a getaway car used in a robbery in Suffolk, Virginia was convicted of Robbery even though he was neither the robber, the lookout, nor the driver of the getaway car.  This case is yet another lesson that one should pick his friends carefully. In Virginia, one who does not commit a crime but who assists the commission of a crime can be found guilty as a “principal in the second degree.”  Such

The federal court of appeals for the Fourth Circuit has reaffirmed that employees can prevail on retaliation claims even when their underlying discrimination claims have failed.  In an unpublished per curiam opinion, the court of appeals dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims under the Equal Pay Act, but remanded one plaintiff’s retaliation claim back to the district court in Roanoke after finding that the trial court had erred when it entered judgment in favor of the employer.