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A University of Virginia student charged last year with assaulting Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control agents attempting to stop her for underage possession beer that turned out to be sparkling water has filed a $40 million lawsuit against the state and seven agents. Among other things, Elizabeth K. Daly’s 47-page suit, filed Tuesday in Richmond Circuit Court, alleges malicious prosecution, failure to train ABC agents appropriately, and six counts of assault and battery.

If you ever doubted that money outweighs principles in contemporary politics, then the case of Richmond campaign consultant Boyd Marcus should permanently erase such ambiguity in your mind. Marcus, a prominent figure in Virginia politics for two decades, made headlines in August when he abandoned a lifetime of supporting Republicans to endorse Democrat Terry McAuliffe for governor. McAuliffe’s team and Marcus trumpeted the conversion as an important political sign that mainstream Republicans were rejecting the tea party conservatism espoused by GOP candidate Ken Cuccinelli II. Instead, we learned Thursday, the primary motive was entirely mercenary. An e-mail was made public...

A University of Virginia student has notified the state that she plans to file a civil action over her arrest by Alcohol Beverage Control agents. Don LeMond with the Virginia Department of Treasury said that the notice begins a dialogue between Elizabeth Daly's lawyers and the Virginia Attorney General's Office. On April 11, 2013, ABC agents confronted the 20-year-old Daly after mistaking sparkling water that she had bought for beer.

Long before vineyards became agriculture du-jour in Virginia, Mike Bowles planted grapevines in 1977, and he claims he's Albemarle's first farm winery operator. Thirty years later, he wanted to be a pioneer again and hop on the craft-distillery trend to make the Italian spirit grappa from chardonnay grape leftovers. Instead, he's earned a more dubious distinction as possibly the first person to get busted while applying for a federal distillery license. Under Virginia's Alcoholic Beverage Control regs, that could cost him his license to make wine at all. Bowles insists he was trying to comply with the hefty volume of...

20-year-old Elizabeth Daly was driving out of the convenience store parking lot when one man jumped on the hood of her car while another PULLED A GUN ON HER. Turns out, they were agents with Virginia's Alcoholic Beverage Control, but because they were in plain clothes, Elizabeth and her roommates were completely confused and terrified.

University of Virginia student spent a night and good part of the next day in jail after seven plain-clothes agents from the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control division ambushed her. The student, 20-year-old Elizabeth Daly, made the mistake of walking to her car with bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream in a dark supermarket parking lot near the UVA campus...

When a half-dozen men and a woman in street clothes closed in on University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly, 20, she and two roommates panicked. That led to Daly spending a night and an afternoon in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Her initial offense? Walking to her car with bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream just purchased from the Harris Teeter in the Barracks Road Shopping Center for a sorority benefit fundraiser. A group of state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents clad in plainclothes approached her, suspecting the blue carton of LaCroix sparkling water to be a 12-pack of beer. Police...

Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control officials said the current review of a University of Virginia student's arrest after agents mistook a crate of LaCroix sparkling water for beer is the second look agency supervisors have taken at the case. ABC earlier this year found no wrongdoing in the agents' encounter with three sorority women who panicked at the sight of a half-dozen undercover officers in plainclothes. One of the agents unholstered his weapon during the April 11 incident and held it at the "ready" position, but did not point it at anyone, according to ABC. "Because of the public outcry, they're...