South Carolina Lawyers Weekly

  Prosecutors can’t rely on the doctrine of transferred intent to prove attempted murder if a defendant lacks the specific intent to commit murder, a divided South Carolina Court of Appeals has ruled.  In a July 14 opinion, the appeals court reversed the conviction of a ...

Tagged with: Attempted Murder

  The University of South Carolina School of Law has taken its show on the road, using a new, custom-made bus to haul students and volunteer attorneys to remote areas to deliver desperately needed legal services to underserved populations.   The Palmetto LEADER ...

Tagged with: trial advocacy

A Richland County jury has awarded more than $13.1 million to a man who was badly injured in a fatal car accident caused by a defective highway repaving project.  Five students at Claflin University were traveling along Interstate 77 in ...

Tagged with: Roadway Defect

  Since his 1987 bar admission, Jon Ozmint has just about done it all. His duties have taken him from South Carolina to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and back. Ozmint spent more than 30 years in the U.S. Army Reserve, the U.S. Navy, and the ...

Tagged with: Judge Jon Ozmint

  The estate of a woman killed during a shootout at a Timmonsville nightclub has settled its lawsuit for $1 million, her attorneys report.   Brian Mickelsen and Danny Dalton of Mount Pleasant report that in the early hours of Feb. ...

Tagged with: wrongful death

The mother of a mentally ill man who died in the Charleston County jail has reached a $10 million settlement with the county, the county sheriff’s office, and the city of North Charleston, her attorneys report.  “From everything we’ve researched, ...

Tagged with: Prison

  A York County jury has awarded $2 million to a man whose tongue cancer was misdiagnosed as tooth trauma, leading to several painful, disfiguring surgeries, his attorneys report. The plaintiff’s recovery was ultimately reduced to $1.2 million due to comparative fault.  John Kassel and Theile ...

Tagged with: cancer

  Evidence of gang involvement is admissible where it serves a purpose other than showing a defendant’s proclivity for criminal conduct, the South Carolina Court of Appeals has unanimously ruled in a case of first impression.  Generally, according to Rule ...

Tagged with: gangs

In the sporting world, athletes often “play hurt” through a variety of physical injuries. Competing now is their focal point, and long-term health risks the afterthought.   The practice of law is similar in many respects. Many lawyers often find it difficult, no matter what else they may be going through, to call for a substitute. So, they put on ...

Tagged with: mental health

  A childhood trauma therapist who testified both as an expert in characteristics of child trauma and child sexual abuse dynamics and also as the treating therapist of a young girl who testified that she had been sexually abused didn’t ...

Tagged with: child sexual abuse Expert Testimony