Business Litigation

Women-owned small businesses are growing three times faster than their counterparts, yet they currently receive less than 5% of federal contracting dollars. The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) recently issued a final rule that is “a…

For the first time, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has expressly adopted the joint employment doctrine for Title VII cases.  Now, an employee can potentially go after more…

Marissa Walz was a long-time employee of financial planning giant Ameriprise, and for most of her time there she received positive reviews.  But more recently, Walz began to engage in erratic and disruptive behavior due to a bipolar condition,…

The U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) recently issued an Administrator’s Interpretation addressing the common misclassification of employees as independent contractors under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). The misclassification of employees as…

In March, a jury awarded Marvin Gaye’s children nearly $7.4 million after rendering a verdict that singers Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams plagiarized Gaye’s 1977 hit “Got to Give It Up” to create “Blurred Lines,” the longest-running number one…

The federal government’s 2008 loan of $85 billion bailing out insurance giant AIG during the financial crisis was illegal but literally “harmless,” according to a recent court decision. Although the government had the right to loan AIG money to keep AIG from certain bankruptcy, the government…

The Virginia Supreme Court made it harder for businesses stung by anonymous social media postings to fight back and get information identifying the people who post online comments.  In Yelp v. Hadeed Carpet Cleaning…

A Virginia lawyer hired a process server as an independent contractor to personally serve legal papers on a husband in a tense divorce case.  The lawyer knew that the husband owned a gun and had expressed concern that the husband could potentially become violent, but he…

In February 2015, the Walt Disney Company ‒ which owns Marvel Worldwide ‒ and Sony Corp. reached an agreement that will permit the enormously popular web-slinger, Spider-Man, to appear in upcoming Marvel superhero movies.  To many Marvel comics readers and Spidey fans, the need for this deal may be quite…