U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 1977

A products liability plaintiff obtained a Rule 37(b) default judgment on liability, entered orally at a hastily noticed contempt hearing on the eve of trial for supposedly willful withholding of roof-intrusion and flexible-coupling test records and a list of related cases, and a jury then awarded $1,050,000 in…

The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of Vinnedge's § 1983 claim against Virginia's Superintendent of Jails, holding that § 1983 liability requires the defendant's personal involvement in the constitutional deprivation and that Virginia law places immediate responsibility for county-jail…