South Carolina Lawyers Weekly

We find no error in the district court’s determination that probable cause existed to support the search of the residence at 604 Hammond Drive. Given the totality of the circumstances, which included a confidential informant’s controlled purchase of narcotics at ...

Tagged with: Criminal Practice

Defendant has failed to show plain error in the district court’s classification of South Carolina second-degree domestic violence as “a crime of violence” under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Defendant makes no argument that the explicit language of South Carolina’s domestic ...

Tagged with: Criminal Practice

At defendant’s trial for sexually abusing his elder stepdaughter, he failed to preserve for appellate review the issue of whether the trial court erred in allowing his younger stepdaughter to testify that he abused her, too. We reverse the Court ...

Tagged with: Criminal Practice

Because the allegedly libelous statement in this case involved an issue of public controversy or concern (a controversial post-game ritual performed by members of a high school football team) and was published by a media defendant, the common law presumption ...

Tagged with: Tort/Negligence

In complying with plaintiff’s nine-page single-spaced demand letter, defendant’s insurance company inadvertently neglected to include in its settlement packet one of the two $25,000 settlement checks that it had prepared. Plaintiff waited until four days after the deadline set out ...

Tagged with: Insurance

In a 10-page single-spaced demand letter, defendant’s law firm made inconsistent demands as to the form of the settlement check it would accept – it demanded both that the check be “issued by the insurance company” and that the check ...

Tagged with: Insurance

Although an Insurance Reserve Fund (IRF) policy and S.C. Code Ann. § 1-11-460 functioned to indemnify the defendant-corrections officers for the amounts they were liable to pay pursuant to a judgment for plaintiff, since plaintiff released the defendants from all ...

Tagged with: Civil Rights

Although defendant’s demand letter said she would only accept a cashier’s or certified bank check, she could not explain why the plaintiff-insurer’s check was unacceptable. Moreover, the demand was found in an ambiguous footnote: “Settlement funds must be paid by ...

Tagged with: Insurance

Even though an asset purchase agreement included a condition precedent that the purchaser obtain a “satisfactory lease” with the defendant-landlord, this did not authorize the landlord to interfere with the asset purchase agreement by attempting to grab some of the ...

Tagged with: Tort/Negligence

Although defendant was not read his Miranda rights until half an hour into his questioning at a police station, since he was not under arrest and went to the station and agreed to answer questions voluntarily, he was not in ...

Tagged with: Criminal Practice