John Crouch, Attorney at Thyden Gross and Callahan LLP

10/10/2026

Over here, they really know how to do a real estate closing.

09/27/2026

Working on a fee award petition after winning a Hague Convention case, I found this gem: "Mathematical certitude is an illusory goal when attempting to segregate legal fees between discrete arguments." Brandau v. Brandau, 52 Va. App. 632, 666 S.E.2d 532 (Va. App. 2008).

09/07/2026

I learned about “Garden Path Sentences” the hard way, by writing too many of them and imposing them on judges. But can someone explain what this one is actually saying?

A garden path sentence is a grammatically correct sentence where the most likely interpretation of the first part of the sentence is actually the wrong one, and the reader has to switch interpretations.

The name of the phenomenon comes from the fact that the reader is being lured into an incorrect interpretation, or “led down the garden path”, as the English idiom goes.

Some other examples:

“The old man the boat.”

“The horse raced past the barn fell.”

“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.”

If you want more of the latest news, research, and interesting reads in language and linguistics, check out my free weekly digest! (Link in my profile)

08/14/2026

05/01/2026

The text of the “Make DC Square Again” bill just dropped — 8 days after it was introduced. And it is way MORE disruptive to people’s lives and private business than what I described in my video — and way more so than the 1801 Act. While in 1801 Congress left Virginia law and (sort of) courts in place here, the “Square” bill says only: “… the laws of the District of Columbia
shall apply to the territory restored under subsection (b),
and the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia shall cease
to apply to such territory, except that—
(1) all rights, titles, and interests in property
held by any person on such date shall remain undisturbed; and
(2) any civil or criminal proceeding pending in
a court of the Commonwealth of Virginia on such
date arising in such territory may be concluded in
that court as if this Act had not been enacted.”

04/22/2026

In a Hague Convention case, “the habitual residence inquiry is not about what a parent wished for; it is what the child actually experienced.”

A mobile child, having lived in Germany, Italy, Hawai'i, and having spent time in other U.S. states and French Polynesia by age 5 was found to have most continuity in Hawai'i.