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A civilian DoD employee lost her age-discrimination case last month, even though she successfully proved that her second-line supervisor was biased against older workers.  In Jernagin v. McHugh (No. 1:12-cv-1285), the U.S. District Court in Alexandria found that even though Lavina Jernagin established the existence of age bias on the part of her second-line supervisor, she failed to establish a causal nexus between that supervisor’s age bias and another supervisor’s decision to rate Jernagin a…

Under the Rehabilitation Act (as with many other federal employment statutes), claimants must first exhaust their administrative remedies before proceeding with a civil action against their employer.  In some instances, courts may excuse an employee’s failure to exhaust administrative remedies if he or she clearly made a “good faith effort” to cooperate.  But in the case of Koch v. White, decided earlier this month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the

When people are considering their options in divorce cases, one question that invariably arises is whether spousal support will need to be paid and, if so, how long will it last.  This can be an acrimonious subject; after all, the idea of giving money every month to someone you may strongly dislike is very unappealing.  In fact, some folks want absolutely nothing to do with their former spouse after a divorce.  Nevertheless, as a practical

A litigant can serve a defendant in Turkey with a lawsuit via Facebook, Linkedin, and e-mail, according to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.  It is often very hard to serve parties with lawsuits — especially if they live out of the country, their real identity is unknown, or they are ducking service.  Since a lawsuit cannot start until service, this is a huge issue. The case is Whoiswhere, Inc. v.