Source: https://familylaw.typepad.com/virginiafamilylawappeals/ethics_malpractice_sanctions/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 05:51:00+00:00

Document:
Barrett v. Minor (Va. Ct. App. unpublished 10/23/18) is a routine affirmation of a fee award in an earlier appeal in extraordinarily typically miserable family law litigation, against a lawyer who was disbarred for things he did in that litigation. The Court says he was extremely litigious and turned even small, routine steps in the process into huge controversies with voluminous briefs. Probably the only remarkable thing about this is that he came to the hearing about attorney's fees in the earlier appeal in shorts and a polo shirt. The judge sent him home to change clothes, and while he was gone, ruled against him on all pretrial motions and heard the other side's opening statement. This too is heartily affirmed.
'The trial court found on the record that father “is or was a lawyer . . . is highly trained . . . and very intelligent and this [appearing at court inappropriately dressed] is just another ploy ...'"
A pleading signed only by a party, when he has counsel of record, is not sufficient to preserve issues for appeal. McGinnis v. Commonwealth, 12/12/2017.
The statute allows for later corrections of pleadings that are "not signed", but not those that are signed, but improperly, by the wrong person, the Court says. So it refuses to let the appellant's attorney cure the defect by signing the pleading months later.
"The statute does not contemplate a hybrid form of representation where a defendant is simultaneously represented by counsel and also acts pro se."
The trial court granted a demurrer and dismissed, with prejudice, a case challenging certain child custody orders. The final order that did this also noted that a defendant had filed a motion for sanctions, and scheduled it for argument on a date almost two months later. No other order was entered within 21 days after the final order. The trial court granted the sanctions motion, almost four months after the date it had set it for, and five and a half months after the final order.
Under Rule 1:1, there was no jurisdiction to hear or decide the sanctions motion more than 21 days after the original final order, so the sanctions order "is a nullity and void ab initio," the Supreme Court says in Barrett v. Minor, unpublished, 2/8/18.
The opinion does not discuss whether there was any particular language in the Final Order reserving jurisdiction to hear the motion, or making exceptions to its finality. So it neither indicates that such language would have made a difference, nor that it wouldn't have.
Those crank cases where someone with a family law or small-claims dispute sues everyone involved, including the judge, usually don't get publicized. This one, from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, appeared in Virginia Lawyers Weekly, probably because in disposing of the case, the court ruled on a couple legal issues that it thought not everyone might be clear on.
Plaintiff lost a custody case with his ex-wife and claimed that that result, and various Virginia laws on child custody, and things that various Virginia judges had done, were unconstitutional. He also sued on behalf of his two children as co-plaintiffs, making a habeas corpus claim that they were being held in the mother's custody due to an unconstitutional decision. He then conceded that the federal law does not allow habeas relief in this situation, but he asks to amend his complaint to pursue a habeas claim under state law, and to have the federal court exercise "supplemental jurisdiction" over the state law claim since it was already hearing his federal case. The court declined to exercise such jurisdiction over the state law claims. It granted a motion "to dismiss or abstain" for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, but did so without prejudice.
The plaintiff also claimed that the mother's new husband should not be allowed to serve as her lawyer in the federal case. The court denied his motion. It said that on the question of whether the husband could be both a lawyer and a witness, it did not have to decide that issue because there was not going to be a trial. Barrett v. Minor (USDC W.D.Va. 8-31-15).
A conflict of interest that allegedly prevented a lawsuit from being brought does not “equitably toll” a statute of limitations, Virginia’s Supreme Court says in Birchwood-Manassas Associates LLC v. Birchwood at Oak Knoll Farm, LLC (6/4/15). The plaintiff argued that the conflict was an “extraordinary circumstance”, which the Supreme Court has said can justify equitable tolling. (Brunswick Land Corp. v. Perkinson, 153 Va. 603, 608, 151 S.E. 138, 140 (1930)). Earlier cases of equitable tolling were suits that had been prevented from timely filing by fraud, or by some affirmative act of the Defendant. But neither of those was alleged in this case. And “Affiliated entities having overlapping management and the occurrence of transactions between such entities are not extraordinary occurrences.” Also, there were other parties available who could have sued on the claims before the statute expired, and one of them did in fact sue on a similar claim. There was no legal disability which “as a matter of law” kept a suit from being filed, and no “extraordinary circumstance which could not have been avoided by the exercise of due diligence.” So the clear rule seems to be that a conflict of interest does not toll the statute, but the additional circumstances the Court cites might lead to a different result in a case where they are different.
Rule 4.2, ending conversations with unrepresented adversary party, "immediately does not mean simultaneously" - Va.S.Ct.
Mixing business, personal affairs makes adultery an attorney-client privilege - Va. Ct.
ADULTERY – PROOF – ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP (AS A DEFENSE AND AS A PRIVILEGE CLAIM). In an unusual (we would hope) recent case a lawyer wife was able to defend herself against her husband’s adultery complaint by invoking her attorney-client relationship with the alleged paramour both as a substantive defense and as one of her privilege claims. Oh yes, and by taking the Fifth Amendment. Having invoked her right against self-incrimination, her defense was that all her conduct could be explained as pursuit of her attorney-client relationship with her business client, and then when asked to explain her conduct, she invoked the attorney-client privilege because it would divulge business-related information belonging to the alleged boy friend’s business, which she represented. Perhaps the trial court should not have granted the wife’s motion to strike these complaints when it decided to grant a no-fault divorce instead, but since (the court held) she had plausible explanations for her suspicious conduct, it would have been harmless error anyway. On appeal it was the husband’s burden to demonstrate how the ruling on the motion prejudiced his right to a fair trial, and the evidence that the husband did proffer was legally insufficient to compel an adultery finding. Moreover, the Court of Appeals found in this unpublished case, Jordan v. Jordan, 27 VLW 160 (6/26/12), that there was nothing in the record showing any adverse ruling by the trial judge when the wife’s assertion of her Fifth Amendment and attorney-client privileges were challenged. Because there was nothing to show the nature of the husband’s objections to his wife’s assertion of the privileges, his arguments could not even be considered on appeal. Fee awards were denied to both parties.

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