South Carolina Lawyers Weekly

  Prosecutors are required to authenticate fingerprint evidence, but that doesn’t give the state a free pass to introduce information that suggests to the jury that a defendant has a criminal history, according to the state Court of Appeals. A ...

Tagged with: fingerprint

If Marlowe Rary had known in 2011 what he eventually learned the hard way, he probably never would have applied to law school. Nearly a decade earlier, Rary, a “typical invincible teenager,” had a couple of run-ins with authorities that ...

Tagged with: law school

  A lawyer can give referrals to a specific chiropractic practice in exchange for their paying part of the costs for a lawyer’s commercial, under a new Ethics Advisory Opinion from the South Carolina Bar Ethics Advisory Committee. However, in ...

Tagged with: Ethics

  After working in the same factory for nigh on 15 years, Johnny Paycheck sang, he wanted nothing more than to work up the nerve to tell his bosses to take this job and shove it, because he wouldn’t be ...

Tagged with: non-compete

  An insurance company can bring a malpractice action against an attorney it hired to represent an insured, a divided South Carolina Supreme Court has ruled. While some are applauding the decision of first impression, others are concerned that it ...

Tagged with: Legal Malpractice

  Two Lowcountry municipal courts are going to have to defend allegations that they unconstitutionally incarcerated numerous indigent defendants without providing counsel, a federal judge has ruled. In Bairefoot v. City of Beaufort, several plaintiffs state Section 1983 claims for ...

Tagged with: Indigent Defense

  A divided South Carolina Supreme Court has overturned a trial judge’s ruling that the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce is a public body under the state’s Freedom of Information Act—much to the dismay of some transparency advocates. “It ...

Tagged with: FOIA

Columbia police officers who arrested a man in a private driveway did not violate his Fourth Amendment rights when they performed an “inventory search” of the vehicle he was driving and had it impounded, a divided Supreme Court has ruled. ...

Tagged with: tow

Charleston County Chief Administrative Judge Markley Dennis balked at the thought of using mediation to resolve criminal cases when a local mediator pitched the idea six or seven years ago. “My first thought was, ‘That’s just crazy. It won’t work,’” ...

Tagged with: Mediation

  A bill regulating homeowners associations took effect May 17 with Gov. Henry McMaster’s approval, making it the state’s first attempt to formally govern housing organizations. While the bill does much to clarify the rights of HOA’s and homeowners, some ...

Tagged with: HOA