A recent decision from the Western District of Virginia offers a clean illustration of a principle that decides many Virginia defamation cases at the outset: context and word choice often determine whether a challenged statement will be treated as a
When a noncompete sentence trails off into an incomplete clause, is fixing it a permissible typo correction or an instance of “blue-penciling” that Virginia law does not allow? The Court of Appeals considered this issue last month in
In defamation cases where actual malice must be shown, a plaintiff must prove the defendant made a false statement with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of falsity. “Reckless disregard” generally means a high degree of subjective
A party with an ironclad statutory or contractual right to attorney fees can still lose that right by failing to plead it correctly. That is the lesson of Pinnacle Flooring Solutions, LLC v. Premier Homes Group, LLC, Record No.
When a defamation defendant can invoke statutory reporting immunity, anti-SLAPP immunity, and common law qualified privilege all at once, one might expect an appellate court to resolve the case on one of those defenses. In Wang v. Taylor,
A party that performs services and incurs expenses does not automatically acquire an equitable claim for compensation. In certain circumstances, claims for unjust enrichment or quantum meruit may arise, but these claims require the claimant to prove the defendant either
Several years ago, this blog covered Garnett v. Remedi SeniorCare of Virginia, LLC, 892 F.3d 140 (4th Cir. 2018), in which the Fourth Circuit held that an employer could not be held vicariously liable for a coworker’s crude and
An often-invoked defense to an action for breach of contract is to claim that the contract cannot be enforced by a party who committed the first material breach. Significantly, the rule does not bar recovery unless the prior breach goes
When we think of defamation, we typically think of words: a slanderous remark, a libelous article, a defamatory social media post. But in Hopkins v. Ryan, Record No. 1192-25-3 (Va. Ct. App. June 23, 2026), the Court of
Virginia courts apply the “source of duty” rule to distinguish contract claims from tort claims. A contracting party may recover in tort only if the breached duty arises independently under common law, not merely from the parties’ contract. If the
