U.Va. law professor joins CrimProf

Here it is declared that the talent pool for the CrimProf blog now includes Brandon L. Garrett of the University of Virginia law school.

Title 8.01 of the Virginia Code for the Palm Pilot

Here you can get Title 8.01 for your Palm Pilot, so you can ponder the elegance of the Virginia civil procedure statutes wherever you go. Somewhat more useful would be Title 18.2 for the Palm Pilot, assuming that courtroom security will let you take your PDA into the courtroom.

Lane Stadium cited as No. 1 home field advantage in college football

This post cites to a list that has the Virginia Tech football stadium at the top of the list of college football fields producing the home field advantage.

I've been to a couple of games there when the maroon hordes were silenced, and a few more where they roared madly to the end.

Very interesting opinion from Magistrate Judge Crigler on Virginia products liability law, expert testimony, and spoliation

In Evans v. Medtronic, Inc., Magistrate Judge Crigler of the W.D. Va. recommended that the defendant's motion for summary judgment be sustained in part and denied in part, granted in part the defendant's motion to strike part of the plaintiff's expert testimony, and granted the plaintiff's motion for the sanction of an adverse inference on account of evidence spoliation. The opinion is 52 pages of interesting stuff.

Not a whole lot of blogging going on

For various technical reasons, there has not been much blogging here, but there have been two rounds of golf, and some interesting work. After the Blog Summit in Charlottesville, blogging will resume at its normal erratic pace.

On a Bivens claim against the officials at USP-Lee

In Adams v. Compton, Magistrate Judge Urbanski disposed in 25 pages of the constitutional and statutory claims of an inmate at the federal prison in Lee County, recommending that summary judgment be granted for the defendants.

The only fact that bothered me about the case was the fact about no film in the video camera, which made me think of another case where the batteries in the video camera were dead. Is this a recurring scenario in prisoner litigation, the officers cannot get the video camera to work until after the dust has settled?

On Oceana, missing mojo, Warner on Potts, and Virginia land use law

Last night, I watched the replay on C-SPAN of the appearance by Governor Warner, Senator Allen, et al., before the base closing commission, as reported here in the Richmond paper, here in the Washington Post, here in the Newport News paper, and here in the Norfolk paper, and it was very interesting.

I didn't hear any of the Florida presentation, but my impression, knowing nothing about the issues before this, was that the commissioners fried the Virginia delegation. One of the commissioners told the mayor of Virginia Beach that her efforts to control development around the base sounded sincere but about 20 years too late. Twenty? The best speaker was the Navy guy, who was told off by some retired general.

The worst speakers by far were Governor Warner and Senator Allen, whiny and defensive in tone, with unspeakably lame efforts at humor. I recalled a seminar presentation from a judge some years ago, where he said that sometimes lawyers betray themselves in oral argument, when they think they're arguing a stinker of a motion. Were they winging it? Had they already been told that Oceana will lose? I've heard from some of my friends about how Warner is such a smooth operator, but somehow he lost his mojo yesterday.

The big news from the Virginia delegation was that the legislature has pledged to adopt zoning law changes in the area of the base - where was the General Assembly on this issue before now? Can development be undone, even by the General Assembly? Should the General Assembly be in the zoning business?

Governor Warner declared that he has written commitments from both of this year's gubernatorial candidates to support the proposed new laws, while throwing in a mindless gibe at Virginia's single-term limit for governors. (Did he say both? I'm almost sure he did. Perhaps the Washington Post will denounce him for excluding Senator Potts.)