§ 8.01-384.Formal exceptions to rulings or orders of court unnecessary; motion for new trial unnecessary in certain cases.

Old-fashioned trial practice demanded a formal exception — a specific, almost ritual objection — every time a party wanted to preserve a ruling for appeal. Section 8.01-384 does away with that formality. What a party needs now is simpler: at the time the court makes or is asked to make a ruling, the party has to make known what action it wants the court to take, or its objection to what the court did, and the reasons behind it. That is enough to preserve the point.

The section also protects parties caught by surprise. If a party never had the chance to object when a ruling or order was made, that missing objection cannot later be held against the party on a motion for a new trial or on appeal. And once an objection or motion has been made known to the court, a party does not have to repeat it later just to keep the appellate door open, and does not have to move for reconsideration to preserve the right to challenge a ruling — even when the ruling itself was entered without prejudice to a motion to reconsider.

Silence on a written order carries real consequences elsewhere in Virginia practice, so the section addresses that too: a party is not deemed to have agreed to or acquiesced in a trial court’s written order, in a way that would forfeit the right to contest it on appeal, unless the party expressly agreed to it in writing on the order’s endorsement. Arguments already made at trial — through pleadings, memoranda, a recital of objections in the final order, transcribed oral argument, or an agreed statement of facts — stay preserved for appeal unless a party expressly withdraws or waives them.

The section closes with a related but separate point: failing to move for a new trial does not waive an objection made during trial, as long as an appeal, writ of error, or supersedeas lies to or from a higher court and the objection was properly made part of the record.