Like the dinosaurs, the Reptile Theory seems to freely roam the earth for years and years. Also like the dinosaurs, it is a favorite topic of articles and debate. For the cave people who are scratching their heads grunting, “Huh? What?”, the Reptile Theory is a legal strategy popularized by David Ball and Don C. Keenan in “Reptile: The 2009 Manual of the Plaintiff’s Revolution.” It is a how-to for obtaining large jury verdicts based on neurological principals based on… Read More

In general, employees in Virginia are eligible for workers’ compensation benefits regardless of who is to blame for the accident. That means, with few exceptions, the negligence of any party involved in a workers’ compensation case is irrelevant to the award of benefits. Common sense, however, would dictate that if employees aren’t following “the rules” when the accident occurs, then they should not be awarded benefits. Virginia codified this commonsense rule in Virginia Code Section 65.2-306, which provides that compensation… Read More

C. Stephen Setliff, partner and owner of Setliff Law, was recently recognized by Best Lawyers as the 2022 "Lawyer of the Year" for Mass Tort Litigation / Class Actions - Defendants. Only a single lawyer in each practice area and designated metropolitan area is honored as the "Lawyer of the Year," making this accolade particularly significant. These lawyers are selected based on particularly impressive voting averages received during the peer review assessments. Receiving this designation reflects the high level of… Read More

On June 1, 2021, Nike successfully obtained Federal trademark registration on the silhouette of its iconic Air Jordan 1 sneaker. This may be surprising to readers for one of two reasons. First, you may be asking “wait, the Air Jordan 1 is so iconic, wasn’t it already trademarked?” The answer to this is… yes, and no. Backing up a second, let’s start by addressing what exactly a trademark is. In colloquial terms, trademark protection is a way for companies to… Read More

Imagine that your employee happens to be at a work site in the course of his job, doing exactly what he’s supposed to be doing, alongside workers employed by other companies who similarly are working diligently. Now let’s say that your employee is using a piece of equipment that malfunctions in such a way that it causes injuries, not just to your employee but to some of the other workers nearby. You perform a preliminary investigation in accordance with your… Read More

Virginia’s New Hazy Marijuana Laws and What Employers Should Know The big shift is here! As of July 1, 2021, adults 21 years of age and older can possess, consume, and grow small amounts of recreational marijuana in the Commonwealth. Virginia is the first state in the South to legalize recreational use of marijuana and Virginia employers are expressing concerns over how these new marijuana laws will affect the workplace and whether employers can continue to prohibit possession in the… Read More

My grandmother made a great Sunday roast; in fact, her potatoes became a benchmark for the multigenerational cooks in my family - “Eh, they are good potatoes, but they’re just not ‘nanny potatoes.’” Great bragging rights. Or so I thought. Take a step back, sit down and read on about grandmother bragging rights. Jason Mackey, winner of several legal awards over the years, has a grandmother who sort of trumped his awards for all time. Meet the late great Frances… Read More

“Where, after a contract is made, a party's performance is made impracticable without his fault by the occurrence of an event the non-occurrence of which was a basic assumption on which the contract was made, his duty to render that performance is discharged, unless the language or the circumstances indicate the contrary.” Restatement (Second) of Contracts, § 261 (1981). In simpler times, law students around the country would know these words – the 1981 formulation of the “doctrine of impracticability”… Read More