Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Lawyer gets public reprimand for accusing Virginia Supreme Court of conspiracy

The Roanoke Times reports here ("State bar reprimands Roanoke lawyer," 12/1/04) that the Virginia State bar has issued a reprimand in the case of the Roanoke area lawyer who made the claim that the Virginia Supreme Court was in cahoots somehow with the Gentry Locke law firm, affecting the rights of his client.

His client was the plaintiff in Snyder-Falkinham v. Stockburger, 249 Va. 376, 457 S.E.2d 39 (1995), which deals with the question, as my contracts professor would have phrased, "how many times to you have to ask each other to dance before you start dancing?" Or, more to the point, when do you have a settlement agreement that you can't back out of? Sometime after the appeal, the lawyer filed a federal lawsuit, as to which at one time Judge Wilson was going to consider sanctions under Rule 11, see Snyder-Falkinham v. Stockburger, 1996 WL 1171800, *1+ (W.D.Va. Aug 05, 1996). The judge backed off on the sanctions, and I think the case was reassigned to someone else.

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