South Carolina Lawyers Weekly

A Myrtle Beach doctor has agreed to pay $325,000 to settle a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that he repeatedly billed federal health care programs for office visits with patients that he had not seen.

Tagged with: Myrtle Beach whistleblower

The seas were calm and the weather was clear when a 2008 Marquis yacht, the Frayed Knot, sank while docked at home on the Tailrace Canal. Though the yacht was inoperable because of water damage, it floated, and for 14 days after — until it was dry-docked — it showed no signs of sinking again. Sound fishy?

A woman whose ex-boyfriend beat her with a miniature baseball bat while she was at work has settled a suit against her employer and a security company for $850,000.

Tagged with: Negligence Personal Injury

A few years ago, Calvin Phelps was a cigarette millionaire who bought a Jazz Age palace filled with antiques and stocked his garages with Italian sports cars. Last month, one of Phelps’ Mocksville, N.C.-based companies agreed to pay millions of dollars to escrow accounts it shortchanged in several states, including North Carolina and South Carolina, while Phelps pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges in Mississippi. He could spend more than 40 years in prison and forfeit up to $2 million for dodging $5 million owed on cigarette sales.

A hospital and several medical attendants will pay $6 million to the mother of a boy born with cerebral palsy after caregivers failed to react to signs of fetal distress during delivery.

Barbara Coppley was driving up Interstate 95 last July, on her way to visit her eldest son in Virginia when she hit a drive shaft from a tractor trailer that had fallen into her lane. As she was standing in the interstate median, inspecting the damage to her car, the driver of a 2005 Lincoln hit the same drive shaft, lost control of his car and hit Coppley. She died at the scene.

John Ludwig, the upstate entrepreneur best known for killing a man when he drove a Maserati through the victim’s living room, will pay $7 million to settle his real estate company’s debt, according to records filed in U.S. District Court in South Carolina last month.

A woman who witnessed her husband’s grisly death in a traffic crash involving a huge piece of farm equipment has settled her wrongful death and survival lawsuit for $1 million. Annie Ham, 65, was riding in a car with her husband, Willie Ham, 62, in January 2009 when their car collided with a combine harvester being hauled on the back of a flatbed truck in the opposite lane of Highway 403 in Florence County.

The parents of a 17-year-old from Charlotte who died after a being struck in the chest with a Taser accepted a $5.5 million reduced award last month against the stun gun’s maker. Ken Harris, a Charlotte attorney on the family’s legal team pictured at left, said he believes it is one of the largest jury awards ever made against Taser.

Tagged with: Taser

The road to downtown beautification is sometimes paved with expensive surprises, a lesson learned by the town of Summerton in a Clarendon County court earlier this month. A jury decided the town and its design firm, LandPlan Group South, should share in the cost of glitches that arose during a revitalization project.

Tagged with: Clarendon County