Virginia Medical Law Report
The Virginia Medical Law Report is a bi-monthly newspaper mailed on a complimentary basis to more than 17,000 physicians and health care providers throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Virginia Medical Law Report is the only newspaper in the commonwealth covering legal issues specific to the unique concerns and interests of doctors and health care providers. The newspaper presents legal developments that may impact how doctors practice from both a risk-management and a practice-management perspective. The newspaper's content includes updates on the latest case decisions, verdict and settlement reports in recent medical-malpractice cases, legislative developments impacting the medical profession, columns authored by lawyers who practice healthcare law and articles highlighting legal trends across the country that may affect Virginia's physicians. More> >

Partnerships - Nursing Home Ownership
Two limited partnerships that own defendant nursing home must defend against a wrongful death suit even though the partnerships contend a partnership is a distinct entity that must be sued in the name of the partnership under the controlling Revised Uniform Partnership Act. More> >

Confidential Informant - Probable Cause
Although police had received reliable information in the past from this confidential informant, the informant's mere physical description of defendant, his location at a particular street corner, and an assertion that he was selling drugs, were not enough to provide probable cause for police to arrest defendant and search him for drugs. More> >

Congressman proposes student privacy law change after Virginia Tech shootings
US Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) proposed legislation that "will allow schools and universities to share a student's mental health information with their parents or guardians if the student is found to be at risk of suicide, or of committing homicide or physical assault." Announced in the wake of the shootings at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute which left 33 people dead last week, the Mental Health Cooperation Act for Families and Schools would clarify when schools can release information about a student's mental health to their parents under the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 More> >

'Spambot' creators facing federal lawsuit in Virginia
A Utah-based anti-spam technology company filed a lawsuit in US District Court in Alexandria in an effort to identify the people behind so-called "spambots", programs that search the Internet for e-mail addresses to sell to spammers. Unspam Technologies Inc. operates a spam harvester-tracking Web site called Project Honey Pot [project website] that has collected thousands of Internet addresses connected to spam harvesters. It has been unable to link those addresses to actual people, but hopes to do so during the discovery process of the lawsuit, said plaintiff's lawyer Jon Praed. Although collecting e-mail addresses is not illegal, using that information to spam is prohibited under federal and state laws. Praed said Unspam can show that the emails were collected for that purpose More> >

US Supreme Court stays Virginia lethal injection execution
The US Supreme Court on Wednesday afternoon issued an order staying the execution of Virginia death row inmate Christopher Scott Emmett [advocacy profile], who had been scheduled to be put to death at 9 PM ET. The Court stayed the execution "pending final disposition of the appeal by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit or further order of this Court." Emmett has been convicted of capital murder and robbery. More> >