Really interesting stuff being argued next week in Virginia Supreme Court

Among the highlights:

some kind of rehearing in Taboada v. Daly Seven, Inc., which is the same case in which the Court in a subsequent opinion called out the losing lawyer for bad stuff he said about them in his petition for rehearing

the appeal from the denial of post-conviction relief in the Aleck Carpitcher case, the famous and troubling case from Roanoke in which the child victim has recanted the trial testimony that led to the conviction

the defendant's appeal in Raytheon Technical Services Company, et al. v. Hyland, involving defamatory performance evaluations

a dispute between LLC members in Roden v. Lerner, where the delightfully-phrased issues are these: "1. The trial court erred in concluding that Lerner had attached a “reasonable” condition to her “push,” when Section 12(A) of Rodler’s Operating Agreement barred her from using Section 11 to obtain payments allegedly owed to Lerner, and LLCs owned or controlled by Lerner, making that condition defective, unreasonable, and unenforceable as a matter of law; 2. The trial court erred in striking down Roden’s “shove” as invalid when his “shove” complied with the requirements in Section 11 of Rodler’s Operating Agreement, and matched Lerner’s “push,” obligating Lerner to sell Roden her ownership interest in Rodler’s LLC, as Section 11 mandates."

perhaps a new twist on an old issue in W.R. Hall, Inc. v. Hampton Roads Sanitation District and Estes Express Lines, Inc., et al. v. Chopper Express, Inc., where both cases involve the issue of the validity under the public policy of the Commonwealth of contractual indemnification as applied to one party's future acts of negligence that result in bodily injury." There was an opinion from Judge Williams of the W.D. Va. on this issue when I was a law clerk in 1989-1990, and he concluded the contract was not against Virginia's public policy. That case involved a tenant who filed suit claiming the landlord's building had made her sick only to find out she had agreed in the lease to indemnify the landlord for personal injury resulting from the landlord's negligence, including her own injury.

Parikh v. Family Care Center, Inc., a non-compete case

Lambert, etc. v. Javed, et al., a Bill Eskridge case that sounds like a Bill Eskridge case, where it appears that the plaintiff filed Suit No. 1 which was timely, then filed Suit No. 2 which was untimely, and then after dismissal of Suit No. 2 based on statute of limitations had Suit No. 1 dismissed based on res judicata. I think the Fourth Circuit almost got to the question of the res judicata effect of a statute of limitations dismissal in Q Intern. Courier Inc. v. Smoak, 441 F.3d 214 (4th Cir. 2006), but instead passed the buck back to the E.D. Va. Anyhow, from Smoak, and Semtek Int'l Inc. v. Lockheed Martin Corp., 531 U.S. 497 (2001), I'm thinking there is more to this issue than I would have guessed, the answer is not the same in every state.

the Nusbaum cases, where one of the issues is whether the trial court "abused his discretion by determining that Mr. Nusbaum deliberately physically attacked defense counsel because the evidence was insufficient to support that finding."