In no action tried before a jury shall the trial judge give to the jury a peremptory instruction directing what verdict the jury shall render. If the trial judge has granted a motion to strike the evidence of the plaintiff or the defendant, the judge shall enter summary judgment or partial summary judgment in conformity with his ruling on the motion to strike.
Va. Code Ann. § 8.01-378
Trial judge not to direct verdicts
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case Board of Supervisors v. Southern Cross Coal Corp. (1989)
Most recently applied in Centra Health, Inc. v. Mullins (January 2009)
Code 1950, § 8-218; 1958, c. 208; 1977, c. 617; 1985, c. 214; 1986, c. 253.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Virginia Law Portal (LIS). Reproduced from public-domain Virginia statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.