Sands Anderson Marks & Miller, a regional law firm based in Richmond, plans to spin off its workers’ compensation practice group as a separate company.

A name has not been chosen.

“We are looking for more flexibility to follow the market and keep our clients at the cutting edge of the best service we can give,” said Cecil Creasey, chairman of the workers’ comp group and one of four partners that will head up the new firm.
Creasey did not get into financial terms but said that they reached a very “equitable arrangement” with Sands Anderson. He said he expects the law firm to be independent of Sands Anderson by the end of the year.

The firm will employ 25 to 30 people, including attorneys, paralegals and staff, most of whom will come from the existing practice. It will have offices in Richmond and Blacksburg. Creasey said they are searching for office space.

The workers’ comp unit has 10 attorneys, about 13 percent of Sands Anderson’s roster of 75. Creasey said the unit handles hundreds of cases a year.

Companies often spin off into separate entities, but it is fairly unusual for law firms to do so. Typically lawyers leave a firm and start from scratch.

Sand Anderson was formed about 150 years ago in Richmond and has five offices in Virginia and North Carolina. According to Virginia Lawyers Weekly, the firm is the state’s seventh largest.

A man has pleaded guilty to breaking into the car of an off-duty New York City police officer who was then killed in a friendly fire shooting.

Miguel Goitia pleaded guilty Wednesday to criminal mischief. He will serve 1 1/2 to 3 years in prison.

Officer Omar Edwards was killed May 28 by Officer Andrew Dunton, who spotted the 25-year-old officer chasing the thief with his gun drawn.

Dunton apparently mistook the off-duty officer for an armed suspect and shot him.

The shooting raised questions about racial profiling. Edwards was black and Dunton is white.

Last month, a grand jury voted not to indict Dunton in the shooting.

Raymond Clark III arrived at court in New Haven just after 10 a.m. escorted by police with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Clark was arrested Thursday at a hotel and charged with murdering Annie Le, whose body was found stuffed in the wall of a research building on what would have been her wedding day.

Police say it was a case of workplace violence, but didn't elaborate.

Police had been waiting outside the Super 8 hotel in Cromwell, about 25 miles north of the Ivy League campus, where Clark got a room shortly after being released from police questioning in the death of the 24-year-old student.

The group on Monday asked the justices to review a lower court decision that favored the NFL team on a legal technicality.

Seven Native Americans have been working through the court system since 1992 to have the Redskins trademarks declared invalid. A U.S. Patent and Trademark Office panel ruled in their favor in 1999. But they've been handed a series of defeats from judges who ruled that the plaintiffs waited too long to bring their suit in the first place.

A lawyer for the group says he'd like to see the highest court decide whether the Redskins' name defames Native Americans.

The doors are closed at the California Supreme Court, the tiny courthouse in Alpine County and every state courthouse in between in an unprecedented attempt to close a historic budget deficit.

The Judicial Council, which oversees California's courts, plan to shutter the courts on the third Wednesday of every month from September through July. The move is expected to save the state $84 million.

The closures will cost 20,000 court employees a day's pay each month.

The state's 1,700 judges are protected by state law from having their paychecks altered and are exempt from the cuts. Chief Justice Ron George says all seven high court justices have voluntarily given up a day's pay and that a large number of other judges have followed suit.

Russia has reached a settlement with Bank of New York Mellon over a $22.5 billion lawsuit against the bank stemming from a 1990s money laundering scheme by one of its executives, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Wednesday.

Russia would receive no less than $14 million for court costs under the long-anticipated, out-of-court deal, Kudrin said — only a fraction of the billions it was claiming. But he said the government would also get a $4 billion discounted loan from the bank, an "act of goodwill" Kudrin insisted is not related to the case.

He said the agreement would be signed soon.

The two-year-long court case stems from a decade-old scandal in which a Bank of New York vice president and her husband were convicted of illegally wiring $7.5 billion of Russian money into accounts at the bank. The Russian federal customs service went to court in 2007 to claim lost tax revenues on those transfers, but the judge overseeing the hearings has urged the two sides to reach a settlement.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled 6-3 that convicted murderer Charles Dean Hood should have raised concerns about the affair between the now retired court officials in earlier appeals. The ruling overturned a lower court's recommendation that Hood be able to make his case for a new trial based on the affair.

"Our argument is that they had this information and should have raised it in the earlier writ," said current prosecutor John Rolater, the chief of Collin County's appellate division. "We consider this a significant success for the state."

Hood's attorneys said in a statement that the affair led to a tainted trial and "obvious and outrageous violations" of Hood's constitutional rights. The ruling will "only add to the perception that justice is skewed in Texas," said Andrea Keilen, of the Texas Defender Service.

The rejection from the state's highest criminal appeals court means a future appeal on the same grounds must go to the U.S. Supreme Court.