Law Practice
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Dathan joined Hoover Penrod in 2019 after representing mostly consumers, tenants, and debtors at Blue Ridge Legal Servcies for eleven years. Before he left BRLS as the supervising attorney in the Harrisonburg office, he received a LASSY (statewide legal aid service award) for a case he argued before all seven justices of the Supreme Court of Virginia and was nominated for the Virginia State Bar’s 2018 Legal Aid Award. Prior to his tenure at BRLS, Dathan served the Honorable David F. Pugh of the 7th Judicial Circuit of Virginia in Newport News as a judicial law clerk.
Dathan helps individuals and businesses efficiently resolve disputes. When a client must navigate a negotiation, mediation, arbitration, or lawsuit, he guides and diligently advocates for them. Datha’s civil litigation practice in Virginia’s state and federal courts involves many areas, including:
- Consumer protection: undoing the harms of abusive debt collection practices, deceptive business tactics, lender misrepresentation, auto fraud, or credit reporting errors
- Bankruptcy: helping individual debtors in chapters 7 & 13; representating a party prosecuting or defending an adversary proceeding
- Family disputes: resolving divorce and separation issues (division of property, debts, and retirement accounts; spousal support, a.k.a. alimony), advocating for a parent in a custody dispute, serving as an appointed guardian ad litem for children, applying the methods of Collaborative Practice
- Housing disputes: fair housing, landlord-tenant, manufactured home parks, subsidized housing
- Other civil disputes: negligence, personal injury, intentional wrongs, real estate conflicts (e.g., partition suits), will contests, contract breaches, mechanic’s liens, debt collection
Dathan also assists clients in transactional matters like drafting leases, creating a home owners association, converting a business into a different legal entity, or drafting wills, powers of attorney, and advance medical directives.