Those pesky ERISA reimbursement claims
Mount Pleasant lawyer Scott Bluestein recently negotiated a settlement of nearly $950,000 for a personal injury client — then the insurer came knocking with a claim for reimbursement under the Employee...
View ArticleAutomaker’s comparative negligence defense nixed
Personal responsibility and product liability collided in a South Carolina Supreme Court opinion that bars automakers from raising the defense of comparative negligence in crashworthiness suits. The...
View ArticleNo respite: Timeshare developers can be subject to private actions
A potential class action lawsuit against a pair of timeshare developers on Hilton Head Island will be able to move forward after the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled May 17 that purchasers and...
View ArticleUnpublished opinion carries day for judge
Unpublished opinions typically go unnoticed. They carry no precedential value, so lawyers and judges tend to ignore them. But a federal judge in Anderson recently turned to an unpublished opinion to...
View ArticlePrediction: no punitives in claim for subrogation
A federal judge in Florence, considering the first-impression issue of whether punitive damages can be sought in a subrogation claim in South Carolina, predicted May 19 that the state Supreme Court...
View ArticleWoman’s $2.9M judgment against bank vacated
A multimillionaire described by her attorneys as “the consummate victim” has watched a $2.9 million judgment that she won against a bank go up in smoke at the South Carolina Court of Appeals. The court...
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Womble Carlyle and Bond Dickinson to tie the knot
Bond Dickinson managing partner Jonathan Blair with Womble Carlyle CEO Elizabeth Temple Almost exactly one year after Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice and U.K.-based Bond Dickinson announced they...
View ArticleSolo practitioners: handling the fear of delegating
By Shawn Healy BridgeTower Media Newswires In order for any law practice to expand, additional personnel and delegation of tasks are required. On the surface it makes logical sense that, in order to...
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Judge, jury dish out $61.5M penalty for telemarketing violations
A federal judge and jury in North Carolina have done something that anyone with a phone has dreamed about at some interrupted moment in their lives — punish a company for those irksome telemarketing...
View ArticleCharleston School of Law’s money woes dissipating, president says
The Charleston School of Law has worked its way off one U.S. Department of Education naughty list and is in the process of being removed from another, according to the school’s president. During 2014...
View ArticleThe meaning of ‘occupy’
What does it mean to “occupy” a vehicle? For a South Carolina federal judge, intent was the key. But the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals focused on proximity. The appellate court on May 30 reversed...
View Article4th Circuit panel splits over admissibility rules
A divided panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel found on June 1 that a district judge erroneously allowed the introduction of a defendant’s prior drug convictions, irreparably tainting a...
View ArticleDifferent jurisdictions, but same conspiracy
An argument by prosecutors that a drug dealer engaged in two separate conspiracies and could be prosecuted in separate Virginia districts has failed to persuade judges of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of...
View ArticleClaims following patient’s escape are for med-mal, not negligence
Allegations that a U.S. Naval Hospital allowed a mentally unstable patient to escape while he was out for a stroll are claims for medical malpractice, not ordinarily negligence, a federal judge has...
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Charleston paralegal wins national award
A paralegal with the Charleston law firm of Yarborough Applegate has been named 2017’s American Association for Justice Paralegal of the Year. Amy Johnson, who has been with the firm for seven years,...
View ArticleNumbers that matter – Charleston Law: DOE audit on grads’ pay was wrong
Leaders at the Charleston School of Law are talking with the U.S. Department of Education on the revision of rules meant to protect students from predatory schools whose graduates find themselves...
View ArticleNo overtime: DirecTV not ‘retail or service establishment’
A federal judge has found that DirecTV, the satellite service provider, failed to prove that it is exempt from a Fair Labor Standards Act overtime wage requirement because its technicians do not work...
View ArticleMost important opinions, second quarter 2017
The most important opinions from the second quarter of 2017. Administrative APA & Mandamus – Savannah River Site – Nuclear Fuel Removal South Carolina v. United States (Lawyers Weekly No....
View ArticleNo immunity for ex-sheriff sued in free speech case
A sheriff-turned-legislator who fired a jail worker for leaking information about an inmate’s death cannot raise qualified immunity as a shield against a lawsuit claiming First Amendment violations, a...
View Article‘Twiqbal’ doesn’t apply to affirmative defenses
A pair of federal judges in South Carolina has joined a growing national trend in finding that recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions requiring heightened pleading requirements from plaintiffs are not...
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