Put eight people in a jury box. Tell them about a practice called “securities lending” and feed them phrases like “indemnity triggering date” or “tender price warranting liquidation.” Show them graphs and charts with numbers, and play seemingly endless videotapes of deposition testimony by former employees. Is it any wonder that counsel for both sides would be wringing their hands, wondering if the jury would return any verdict at all, let alone the one they’d like? But return a verdict it did in City of St. Petersburg v. Wells Fargo Bank.
A South Carolina woman won a $1 million settlement from her primary care physician’s insurance company after a mole her doctor said was benign grew into stage 3B melanoma, according to her attorney, David Yarborough of Yarborough Applegate in Mount Pleasant.
Rita Blair and her husband Michael began to worry the day after she was discharged from Palmetto Baptist Hospital. They called Dr. John Warren, who had performed a gynecological surgical procedure on her, and reported that Rita was nauseous and constipated. Rita died three weeks after the first surgery. She suffered massive organ failure caused by a bacterial infection that began when her colon was perforated.
A jury has awarded $750,000 to a woman in a slip-and-fall case, but the defendant wants a judge to reverse the verdict and order a new trial. The plaintiff, Elaine Reynolds, was working at a Target store in Guilford County in June 2009, when she walked across a wet carpet that had been recently shampooed, and slipped when she stepped onto a tile floor.
Henry Frampton and his wife had things worked out just fine with properties they owned on Folly Road in Charleston. She owned the parcel where they lived, and he owned the one next door, which they used as a rental property. They had no trouble finding tenants — until the S.C. Department of Transportation began a bridge replacement project which involved putting a guardrail directly in front of the driveway on that lot.
A judge has ruled that a motel maid who was raped on the job is entitled to $1.5 million in damages, but collecting the money is going to be an uphill battle.
The family of a 36-year-old man whose death in the woods during a hunting trip came just weeks after a doctor failed to notice his serious heart condition collected a $3 million settlement after filing a medical malpractice action.
Chad A. McGowan (pictured) of McGowan, Hood & Felder in Rock Hill represented the deceased hunter’s family in the med-mal lawsuit against the doctor. The suit was settled earlier this month.
An arbitration panel awarded more than $3 million to a married couple after a fertility clinic helped them conceive without warning the mother that she carried a deadly disease which could be passed on to her child.
Reproductive Endocrinology Associates of Charlotte mishandled the results of a medical screening test that showed Sally Ware was a carrier of cystic fibrosis, and her daughter ended up inheriting the disease, according to Ware’s attorneys, William H. Elam (pictured) and David S. Rudolf of Charlotte.
When Kelly Waldron Bowles, 27, finally decided in 2002 to report years of sexual abuse at the hands of her former stepfather, a Dorchester County grand jury indicted Donald A. Baxter with second degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor and committing a lewd act upon a child.
Baxter eventually pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of aggravated assault and battery by taking indecent liberties with a minor, and was sentenced to six years in prison, reduced to two years probation.
He did no jail time.
But in the civil suit that followed eight years later, it took Berkeley County Court of Common Pleas Judge Stephanie McDonald just one day to find for the victim.
On November 15, McDonald awarded Bowles $14 million in damages on her claims of sexual assault, sexual battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress and gross negligence.
“The award cannot replace the childhood and innocence that Kelly lost,” said her attorney, Joseph P. Griffith Jr. of Charleston (pictured).
Ignorance of the law is no defense. But how about the facts? How long, for example, can a lender feign ignorance of the facts and collect on a mortgage loan after the underlying debt has been satisfied by a deed in lieu of foreclosure?
The answer: As long as the borrower continues to pay, U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Anderson Jr. held recently in Martin v. American General Finance Inc., a case that aptly depicts the confusion resulting when a note and mortgage go their separate ways.
In 1993, Melinda Martin and her husband bought a three-bedroom house in Winnsboro at a foreclosure sale. In 1996, they took out a mortgage with First Family Financial Services. In 1999 they executed a deed in lieu of foreclosure to First Family, which First Family then filed with the county clerk.
Next Page »
