A 69-year-old plaintiff who sued his former employer for allegedly violating the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”) learned a harsh lesson recently when the District Court awarded summary judgment to the employer: in discrimination cases, sometimes what actually happened isn’t nearly as important as what the employer believed to have happened. In Bandy v. Advance Auto Parts, Inc., Civil Action No. 7:11-cv-00365 (W.D. Va. Nov. 15, 2012), Roger Dean Bandy (“Bandy”) sued his former

When scanning the docket of domestic relations cases these days, it is unfortunately not uncommon to find allegations of verbal and physical abuse between spouses.  Stereotypically, one might assume that this kind of unfortunate behavior only involves husbands who are abusive to their wives.  However, the fact of the matter is that either husbands or wives can be the victims of abuse. For example, in the recent Fairfax County Circuit Court case of  Ibrayeva v.

In a case that the Court of Appeals of Virginia itself calls “particularly troublesome,” the Court affirmed a Perjury conviction of a man in a case where the Court itself noted that the evidence on the record was insufficient for the conviction.  Really. In this case, Stephen Sutphin was convicted at trial of Perjury and sentenced to four months of active jail time.  He appealed, arguing that the Commonwealth failed to prove some key Common

Can an ABC licensee lose its license to sell alcoholic beverages merely by filing its annual report late? Absolutely! Notice that we did not ask “Can an ABC licensee lose its license by failing to file its annual report.  We merely asked “…by filing its report late?”  In a recent ABC case, the Hearing Officer revoked a merchant’s license to sell alcohol because the annual report was late and the inventory had not yet been

It is not often that a federal appellate court will write one of George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words” over a dozen times in a published legal opinion — often in all capital letters.  However, in a US Court of Appeals case that is destined to be the inspiration for legal careers of 12-year-old boys everywhere, the Court yesterday said that a business could not trademark the word “!@#$%^&*.”  (See, not even we can get ourselves