Legal Climate
Virginia’s legal climate is a significant consideration when a company is deciding where to locate or expand. Maintaining Virginia’s fair, stable, and predictable legal and regulatory practices is critical to the Commonwealth’s economic growth and success. The opportunity to obtain a fair and efficient resolution of legal disputes, access to courts, and threats of frivolous litigation all contribute to a company’s overall operational decisions.
Continued protection of property and contract rights, labor laws, and comprehensive regulatory review is especially important in an increasingly litigious society and complicated regulatory environment. Nonetheless, there remains room for additional efficiencies in legal proceedings and permitting.
The recommendations in this section provide a comprehensive policy framework to promote a predictable legal climate, encourage efficiency in the civil justice system, and defend Virginia’s business climate through 2035 and beyond.
Recommendations
- Advocate for the establishment of a specialized business court docket to handle complex business litigation within the Commonwealth’s circuit courts, in collaboration with the Virginia Supreme Court, consistent with models in 30 other states
- Advocate for sensible judicial reform measures to control excessive litigation, discourage frivolous lawsuits, and continue limited punitive damages, promoting a more predictable landscape while encouraging alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms, such as mediation and arbitration, as cost-effective and timely alternatives to traditional litigation
- Support the continued prudent and limited scope of class action mechanisms within Virginia’s state court system, which provides predictability and helps prevent costly litigation for employers
- Advocate for the expanded use of summary judgment to promote judicial efficiency and reduce unnecessary litigation costs
- Limit the expansion of private rights of action to prevent excessive litigation and maintain an efficient civil justice system
- Emphasize the importance of clear and robust legal protections for private property rights, including intellectual property
- Advocate for a legal system that ensures contracts are consistently upheld and disputes are resolved fairly and efficiently, providing certainty for commercial transactions
- Oppose retroactively impairing existing contracts and undue government interference in private commercial agreements
- Ensure an efficient and balanced unemployment and workers’ compensation system and support improvements to process valid claims and identify fraudulent ones
- Advocate for reasonable labor laws and tort reform that maintain at-will employment and balance employee protections with employer flexibility, avoiding mandates that unduly increase labor costs or hinder operational agility
- Provide clear legal guidance and predictable enforcement regarding non-compete and non-solicitation agreements, balancing employer interests in protecting proprietary information with employee mobility
- Support periodic and systematic review of all state regulations and their functional equivalents, including through the use of artificial intelligence, to identify and eliminate outdated, redundant, or unnecessarily burdensome rules
- Push for regulations to be written in plain language, easily understood by businesses, avoiding overly complex jargon or ambiguous interpretations
- Advocate for consistent and transparent enforcement of existing laws and regulations by state agencies, minimizing arbitrary or sudden shifts in interpretation
- Support initiatives to streamline and expedite state and local permits and licenses necessary for business operations (e.g., zoning, occupational licenses, construction permits)
- Continue to evaluate privacy laws and regulations to ensure they are reasonable and balanced and not unduly burdensome to the business community, while protecting personally identifiable information
Acknowledgements
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