Civil / Business Law

Question:  I loaned an ex-friend $800 two years ago and she hasn’t paid back a penny. What process do I go about getting my money? Answer:  Unfortunately, it is time consuming and expensive to collect a small debt. First, one must file and serve a Warrant in Debt. Second, he must appear in court for either the civil return date, the trial date, or both. Third, if one successfully proves that he is owed the…

There is no “parent-child” privilege in Virginia according to a federal court.  This means that a son can be compelled to testify against his parent. The case is Under Seal v. United States, 13-4933 (4th Cir., June 17, 2014). By contrast, there is an “attorney-client,” “clergy-communicant,” and “interpreter privilege for both civil and criminal cases.  There is also, for civil cases only, a “physician-patient” privilege.  The rules are set forth in the Virginia Rules of

Last week, the United States Supreme Court released its opinion in Lawson v. FMR, LLC, 571 U.S. ___ (2014), a decision that reaffirmed the breadth and force of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act’s whistleblower protection provision.  As a result, millions of private businesses are now potentially subject to claims of whistleblower retaliation that had previously been reserved for a few thousand publicly-traded companies. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (“SOX” or the “Act”) was enacted by Congress after

Under Virginia law, service of process should be perfected on defendants within one-year of the date a plaintiff files a lawsuit.  A plaintiff’s failure to timely serve often leads to dismissal of the plaintiff’s case with prejudice.  In a recent case, a plaintiff’s former employee waited more than one year to serve her former employers with service of process in her harassment lawsuit, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia dismissed