Supreme Court of Virginia September Argument Docket
The Supreme Court of Virginia has posted its September 2009 argument docket. The Court will hear argument in 31 cases. Here's the quick break down:
- 15 criminal cases;
- 9 civil cases;
- 5 State Corporation Commission cases;
- 1 original jurisdiction case; and
- 1 Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission case.
What are the arguments to watch this September? Let me know what you think.
The five SCC cases are actually all of one piece -- the main issue is whether the SCC can, in effect, approve a new 500 kv line though the upper Shenandoah based on the regional power authority's determination that the line is needed, or whether it has to conduct its own independent review (the SCC says it did just that, and that the regional authority's findings were simply part of the evidence it considered). One of the commissioners wrote an interesting concurrence in which he said that while he agreed that the regional authority's decision was more or less conclusive on the question of need, Virginia made a bad deal when it agreed to join the regional authority as part of deregulation because there has been no benefit from deregulation. Amen to that!
The JIRC case is out of Virginia Beach. Judge Ramona D. Taylor is defending a charge that she deliberately denied a juvenile litigant the right to appeal her denial of bond pending entry of a final after convicting him of a misdemeanor assault. The attorney for the juvenile alleges that Judge Taylor was motivated by a personal animus against his client because it was alleged that he used a racial slur during the assault. After denying a request for entry of final judgment on the conviction so that an appeal could be entered, Judge Taylor then denied a request for a bond. The judge styled the bond order as "interlocutory and nonappealable" and then allegedly told the clerk not to accept the notice of appeal from that order (Judge Taylor maintains that she did not directly tell the clerk to refuse the appeal, but rather told the clerk to follow the order). The attorney ultimately obtained a writ of mandamus directing the clerk to accept the appeal and obtained a bond in the circuit court. The case is unusual in that JIRC rarely takes a case to the Supreme Court unless it deems that removal may be warranted. Here, the Commission is asking only that Judge Taylor be censured (nonetheless, the Court could, in theory, vote to remove her).
Hutchins v. Talbot will be an interesting case to follow, not so much for the substance (qualification of an expert witness in a med. mal. case), but because it may answer the question of how a "fixed-term suspending order" affects an appeal. After judgment was entered, the circuit court entered an order allowing an "additional" 35 days (that is, above the 21 days of Rule 1:1) for the filing of post-trial motions extending the court's jurisdiction "for a total of 56 days." The appellant argues that this order means that the judgment would become final only after 56 days and timed the notice of appeal accordingly, while the appellee contends that order was final after 35 days, when the suspension period ended and, thus, the notice of appeal was late. Lots of circuit courts, especially in Northern VA, use this type of language in final orders, so some guidance from the Court would be most welcome.
On Hutchins, I had my facts a little scrambled. The order actually suspended the judgment for 14 days for a "total of 35 days" (14 days plus the 21 of Rule 1:1, not for 35 days, plus 21), however the issue remains the same.
On the criminal docket, Turner v. Commowealth raises the iteresting question of whether a polygraph result can be admitted under the "relaxed" a revocation hearing evidentiary standard of a revocation hearing.