Devers v. Dalonas

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was justly renowned for many contributions to legal lore. As famous perhaps as any was his equation of a page of history to a volume of logic.3 My dissent from the opinion of the panel majority stems from disagreement over the teachings of history.

Malcolm B. Devers owned a parcel of unencumbered Virginia real estate in fee simple absolute. He began to assemble the parcel in the 1950’s and, by 1962, it had been fully acquired as the result of a property settlement resulting from dissolution of an earlier marriage than his subsequent one to Doris Devers.4

Therea…