The BLBlog

Virginia business owners and individuals alike should pay heed - the majority of the 884 bills signed into law by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine during the last General Assembly session went into effect today.

Among the new laws:

• Landlords are not liable for civil damages stemming from mold exposure if the mold condition is caused solely by tenant negligence.
• Weekly unemployment compensation will increase to a maximum of $378 for claims effective on or after July 6.
• Those facing foreclosure due to a high-risk loan may request a 30-day repreive and credit counseling.
• Payday lenders may only allow borrowers to take out one loan at a time, increase repayment time to four weeks and cap interest rates at 36 percent.
• It is now illegal to distribute another person’s Social Security number, whether it was obtained from private or public documents.

See the Richmond Times-Dispatch for some of the other laws that may affect you or your business.

A Fluvanna County developer who wanted to try a new sewage treatment system for a cluster development took his case to court after being shut down by a tie vote of the county’s board of supervisors. Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. declared that the denied special use permit was unnecessary, according to the Charlottesville Daily Progress.

“A lot of people think you can’t beat City Hall, but I felt all along that they did me wrong,” developer Mike Clark said.

A Giles County grand jury has determined that a power company project to dump 254,000 cubic yards of coal ash on property beside the New River in Narrows is not a public nuisance. The Roanoke Times has the story here.

The law that permits citizens to ask for a grand jury investigation of alleged public nuisances is here. For guidance on what constitutes a public nuisance, we have this statute.

The federal Food and Drug Administration has issued salmonella warnings about raw tomatoes and food products containing them. Grocers and restaurants have responded by yanking the tomatoes from the shelves, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The FDA is seeking to determine where the salmonella came from; at least 23 people across the country have been hospitalized since June 3, two of them in Virginia.

Thieves used the Social Security number of a University of Virginia microchemistry professor to steal $22,000 from his credit card account, reports The Daily Progress. Patrick Grant’s personal information was among the data on U.Va. faculty that was breached twice within the past year.

A well-known Christiansburg developer apparently is among the victims of a lawyer accused of providing clients with phony legal documents. The developer, Roger Woody, claimed that he had an easement allowing him to drive dump trucks through the middle of a shopping center parking lot. The shopping center owners filed suit, asking the court to declare that there was no such easement. According to the Roanoke Times, the Montgomery County Circuit Court lawsuit now has been dropped since it was discovered that the easement agreement was an apparent forgery. Woody’s former lawyer, Gerard Marks, is facing trial on charges of providing forged documents to cover for legal work that he did not do.

Woody was in the news recently for using a new lawyer, B.K. Cruey, to file a defamation suit against bloggers and others who, he claims, have hurt his business with their criticism. That suit still is pending in circuit court.

A big FBI raid in the Luray area of Page County has so far produced one wounded FBI agent and one ticked-off business owner. As reported by TV station WHSV, the businessman claims that the FBI is looking for evidence against a “top ranking County official.”

The wounded FBI agent apparently shot himself by accident and was not seriously hurt.

A fact that I should have known, but did not — localities in Virginia can decide to hold farmers strictly liable if their livestock gets out of the farm fence and causes an accident. The issue came to light because Wythe County leaders are debating whether to stay with their strict liability law or revert to the default state law, as reported by the Wytheville Enterprise. Under the default law, someone hurt by the roaming livestock has to prove that the animal’s owner was negligent in allowing the escape in order to recover damages from the owner.  Augusta County has an extensive discussion of animal fencing law on its Web site here.

A would-be homebuyer changed his mind after signing a contract to buy a house for $650,000. The seller sued and won a judgment equal to what he lost: the reduction in sale price caused by the downturn in the market. The Roanoke Times has the story on the verdict from a Bedford County jury.

Can radio station owners agree not to compete with each other by using the same station format? The Federal Communications Commission says, “No” in a case arising out of stations in Lynchburg and Bedford.

Gary Burns sold his Lynchburg talk-radio station to Centennial Broadcasting. As part of the deal, Burns agreed not to operate another talk radio station in the area. When he did so anyway, with Bedford’s WBLT, Centennial took him to court. Both federal Judge Norman Moon and the 4th Circuit agreed that Centennial could enforce the non-compete deal.

Now, however, the FCC says Burns cannot be bound by any format deals. According to the commission, while such a deal may pass muster under Virginia contract law, federally-licensed radio stations answer to a higher (or different) authority. A station owner — obligated to serve the public interest — cannot agree to have his hands tied as to what format he can broadcast.

Industry observers say the decision makes new law for broadcasters, and new work for the lawyers that advise them.