News

The West Virginia University College of Law is using a $120,000 grant from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation to help revitalize cities and towns in the state.

Awarded to the Land Use and Sustainable Development Law Clinic, the grant is supporting a program called West Virginia Legal Education to Address Abandoned/Neglected Properties, or WV LEAP. Through the program, clinic attorneys and students will help communities deal with decaying, abandoned, or uninhabitable buildings.

According to Katherine Garvey, director of the LUSD Law Clinic, neglected properties can be difficult for municipalities to address because of a lack of clarity on applicable laws, problems locating property owners and legal complexities related to property titles.

With WV LEAP, Garvey hopes to provide state municipalities with the tools and strategies available to them through technical legal assistance.

During the spring and summer of 2015, the LUSD Law Clinic will compile data and conduct legal research that will be made available to municipal attorneys as a resource on specific steps communities can utilize to combat problems of abandoned or decaying properties.

Emphasis will also be placed on educational outreach initiatives. The WV LEAP team will conduct a Continuing Legal Education session for West Virginia attorneys on May 14 in Charleston.

Patrick McGinley, the Charles Haden II Professor of Law, recently participated in the annual “Legislative Lookahead” panel hosted by the West Virginia Press Association.

Each year, the event serves as a forum for panelists to inform journalists on key issues and events within the state that could affect the upcoming legislative session. 

McGinley, along with fellow panelists Tim Armistead, the incoming Speaker of the House of Delegates, and Don Smith, the Executive Director of the West Virginia Press Association, participated in a discussion on freedom of information act and other issues that may come before the legislature during the 2015 session. Rob Byers, Executive Editor of the Charleston Gazette, was the panel moderator. 

Other topics discussed at the event held in Charleston included municipal issues, gun rights, water quality, and Republican control of the state legislature.

The panel was organized by Dorothy Abernathy, Associated Press Mid-Atlantic Bureau Chief for Virginia, Washington DC, Maryland, West Virginia. and Delaware, with assistance from Marshall University, Charleston Newspapers and the West Virginia Press Association.

-WVU-

MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA—Paulette Brown, the president-elect of the American Bar Association, is speaking at the West Virginia University College of Law on Thursday, January 29, at 7:15 p.m. in the college’s Event Hall.

Admission is free and the public is invited to attend.

Brown will discuss the school-to-prison pipeline and its impact on the legal profession’s diversity and cultural competence. A reception in the College of Law Lobby will follow her speech.

“We are honored that Ms. Brown is speaking in West Virginia on such an important topic,” said Gregory W. Bowman, interim dean and professor of law. “Her remarks are certain to engage, inspire, and challenge the audience.”

MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA—The West Virginia University College of Law is hosting an open house for prospective students from 9:00 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. on Saturday, January 24.

Registration for Experience WVU Law Day is free and includes lunch. It is open to anyone interested in earning a law degree, including high school students, college students, and second-career adults. The deadline for registration is Friday, January 16.

Experience WVU Law Day will focus on the law school application process, academic offerings, career options, and financial aid. Participants will also be able to sit in on a mock class and tour the College of Law, which recently opened a 30,000 square foot addition.

“We want to introduce prospective students to the College of Law and answer their questions,” said Tina Jernigan, director of admissions. “This is a good opportunity to get a glimpse of what law school is really like.”

MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA—Within the panelled walls of the Marlyn E. Lugar Courtroom at the West Virginia University College of Law, students learn from experienced professors and legal scholars deliver insightful lectures.

In Lugar Courtroom, surrounded by portraits of former West Virginia Supreme Court justices, is also where two law alumni recently declared their love and life-long commitment to each other in the form of a marriage proposal.

That is what happened on September 30, 2014, when Joe Fabie ‘14 proposed to Christi Fraser ‘13 in the very courtroom where they first met two years earlier—and she said “Yes.”

“I wanted it to be a surprise and I wanted it to be some place that had a special meaning for both of us,” said Joe. “We met at the law school, our relationship flourished there, and that’s where we fell in love—so I thought that would be the perfect place to propose.”

MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA—The recent federal indictment of former Massey Energy chief Donald L. Blankenship for violating health and safety laws is unprecedented says a West Virginia University law professor who contributed to a 2011 state report on the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster that found the company directly responsible for the blast that killed 29 miners in 2010. 

Massey owned the Upper Big Branch mine where a methane gas explosion spread through two miles of tunnel, killing the miners. 

“Those responsible for managing mines in a way that caused multiple deaths were never held responsible,” Patrick McGinley, the Charles H. Haden II Professor of Law, told The New York Times. “It shocks the conscience.”

The explosion fed on illegally high levels of coal dust, according to reports, and federal prosecutors have accused Blankenship of ignoring health and safety laws to maximize profits while covering up violations.

McGinley served as a member of then-Gov. Joe Manchin’s investigative team that explored the failure of basic coal mine safety practices at the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster.

McGinley is available to the media to offer commentary on the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, the indictment of Blankenship, as well as mine safety issues, black lung and the environmental impact of mining operations. McGinley can be reached via email at Patrick.McGinley@mail.wvu.edu or by phone at 304-293-6823.

MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA —West Virginia University College of Law professor Joshua Fershee is the author of a new textbook on energy law. 

“Energy Law: A Context and Practice Casebook” (Carolina Academic Press, 2014) covers energy-focused topics such as economic regulations, mineral rights, market structures, and environmental concerns.

“Energy law is actually kind of hard to define, and one of the things that I think my book helps show is that it’s . . . an amalgam of a variety of different areas,” said Fershee in an interview with New Books in Law.

“Energy Law: A Context and Practice Casebook” is part of the Context and Practice Series, edited by Michael Hunter Schwartz, Professor of Law and Dean of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Bowen School of Law.

Fershee joined the faculty of WVU Law in fall 2012 as part of the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development and the WVU Shale Gas Initiative. His research and scholarship focus primarily on energy law and business law. He is director of WVU’s LL.M. in energy and sustainable development law.

-WVU-

MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA—Several WVU Law students recently presented bills they had researched and drafted to state legislators. The practical experience was the culmination of Lawyers & Legislation, a seminar taught by Professor of Law David Hardesty, WVU President Emeritus.

The mock legislative hearings were conducted before West Virginia state senators Robert Beach and Amanda Pasdon, and former delegate Alex J. Shook ‘97.

The students’ bills ranged from banning revenge porn and requiring lower teacher-student ratios in public schools to legalizing marijuana and prohibiting employment and housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and identity.

Rebekah Bofinger, a 3L, says she got a lot out of the class because it required practical drafting skills instead of writing a research paper on a certain area of law.

MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA—West Virginia University College of Law Professor Patrick McGinley recently participated in the fourth annual Carver Colloquium at the University of Denver Sturm School of Law.

The topic of the colloquium was fracking bans and setbacks and whether or not they constitute a takings—the seizure of private property by the government for public use. McGinley debated the issue Wayne Forman, a land, oil and gas attorney with the firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.

Constitutional Takings Jurisprudence is a focus of McGinley’s legal scholarship. His article “Regulatory Takings in the Shale Gas Patch” was published in the Penn State Environmental Law Review (19 Penn St. Envtl. L. Rev. 193).

Each year, the Carver Colloquium features two notable land use, environmental, and natural resources law scholars. It is hosted by the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute and Jan Laitos, the John A. Carver, Jr. Chair at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Video footage of the 2014 Carver Colloquium featuring McGinley can be viewed here.

MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA — WVU Law professor is co-author “Mastering Labor Law” (Carolina Academic Press). 

“We take the complicated legal foundations of labor law and makes them accessible to the beginner – or even to a lay person – while still being of significant use to the expert,” said Lofaso, who also serves as associate dean for faculty research and development at WVU Law.”It is one of the few labor law books to include significant discussion of public-sector labor law, making it a leader among labor law treatises.” 

“Mastering Labor Law” begins with an introduction to private and public sector labor law. It then turns to United States labor history and procedure, organization, and jurisdiction issues under the National Labor Relations Act. The book then comprehensively addresses the organizational and collective bargaining processes, before covering forms of protected activity. It closes by considering other topics such as labor arbitration, union security clause, labor preemption, and antitrust doctrine.

The other co-authors of “Mastering Labor Law” are Paul M. Secunda, Professor of Law and Director of the Labor and Employment Law Program at Marquette University Law School, Joseph E. Slater, the Eugene N. Balk Professor of Law and Values at the University of Toledo College of Law, and Jeffrey M. Hirsch, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and Geneva Yeargan Rand Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law.

-WVU-

kc 11/7/14