This case involved a dispute between Safway Steel Scaffolds of Virginia, Inc. and its former employee Norman Coulter over compensation under an employment contract for managing the company's Roanoke branch, which included a profit-sharing arrangement based on gross profits from invoices. The plaintiff sought an accounting and discovery after the contract was terminated, leading to disagreements about which invoices for business in the assigned territory should be included in calculating the branch's gross profits. The trial court initially awarded the plaintiff $7,005.21 plus partial costs, but on appeal the Virginia Supreme Court modified the decree to increase the award by $371.72 for automobile depreciation and to assign all trial costs to the defendant, while otherwise affirming the lower court's rulings on the invoice inclusions and contract interpretation. The court reasoned that the contract terms required inclusion of certain pre-termination business in gross profits and that the plaintiff substantially prevailed in the litigation, warranting full costs under equitable principles.
Louis H. Parker, owner of a motel in Prince William County, filed a claim with the county board of supervisors for $31,500 in damages, alleging that a sewage treatment plant constructed across the road created a nuisance through odors, insects, and debris that reduced his property's value. The board disallowed the claim, Parker received notice by mail, and he attempted to appeal to the circuit court by serving notice and depositing a check for costs, but did not file a proper appeal bond with surety within the thirty-day period after notice or the six-month maximum period under Code § 15-259. The trial court dismissed the proceeding for lack of jurisdiction, rejecting Parker's request to convert the appeal into an original action, and the Supreme Court affirmed because the statutory requirements for perfecting an appeal were not met and the board had neither refused to act nor consented to an original suit.
In Bundy v. Bundy, a husband deserted his wife and infant child without justification and took the child to North Carolina, prompting the wife to seek a divorce from bed and board, custody of the child, and support. The trial court denied divorce to both parties, awarded the wife custody and child support, but provided no alimony for the wife herself. On appeal, the court affirmed the custody award, the denial of divorce to the husband, and the child support amount, but reversed the denial of alimony to the wife. The core reasoning was that a husband has a legal and moral duty to support his wife according to his financial ability and their accustomed standard of living, regardless of whether she is destitute, and the evidence showed the wife's needs were not met without such support; the case was remanded to set a fair alimony amount.
The case involved Grady J. Prentice, operating as the Prentice Poultry Plant, challenging a City of Richmond tax assessment that imposed a wholesale merchants' license tax on his poultry processing business under the city code, from which he claimed exemption as a manufacturer. The trial court ruled that Prentice was not a manufacturer and thus liable for the tax, and the Virginia Supreme Court affirmed the judgment. The court reasoned that, under Virginia precedents, manufacturing requires a substantial qualitative transformation of raw materials into a product of substantially different character, which was lacking in Prentice's operations of buying, killing, cleaning, chilling, and selling poultry—even with significant mechanization and investment—making him subject to the tax as a wholesale merchant.
This case involves the appeal of Arlington Farrow's conviction for second-degree murder of Deputy Sheriff Hugh Conway Broadwell in Giles County, for which he received a 15-year prison sentence. The defendant sought reversal on grounds including denial of his motion for change of venue due to alleged local prejudice from newspaper coverage and jail visit restrictions, insufficiency of the evidence to support the verdict, and errors in granting and refusing jury instructions. The court ruled that the trial judge did not abuse discretion in denying venue change because the defendant failed to show widespread prejudice overcoming the presumption of a fair local trial, the evidence including witness accounts and physical details justified rejecting the self-defense claim and supporting murder in the second degree, and the instruction assignments were procedurally deficient under appellate rules. The judgment was affirmed.
In this case, Mayflower Park Corporation sued Hodges Manor Corporation and Construction Associates for damages after the defendants, while developing a residential subdivision, installed larger drainage pipes and graded streets to channel increased quantities of surface water onto the plaintiff's adjacent land, and also entered the plaintiff's property without permission to deepen a ditch. A jury awarded the plaintiff $13,000, and the trial court entered judgment on the verdict. The Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed, holding that the evidence supported the finding that the defendants had collected surface water into artificial channels and discharged it in greater volume and velocity onto the plaintiff's land. Virginia law permits landowners to protect their property from surface water as a common enemy but prohibits them from doing so by artificially concentrating and redirecting it to cause injury to others, a rule applied here based on the defendants' grading and piping changes. The court also upheld the damages instruction on repair costs, finding no prejudice to the defendants.