Before the deadline for serving notice of appeal on respondent, appellant’s counsel (1) electronically filed its notice of appeal with the circuit court and received an automated reply which acknowledged the filing and said that respondent’s attorneys had been “served ...

Tagged with: Civil Practice

Where the circuit court’s contempt order awarded plaintiff, as personal representative of an estate, $70,000 in fees and costs as compensatory contempt, the award of compensatory contempt was intended to indemnify the estate, not as a punishment. As a sanction ...

Tagged with: Civil Practice

In this discovery dispute that began in 2012, in finding that the defendant-Appellants “engaged in a deliberate pattern of discovery abuse,” the circuit court described the many times Appellants missed discovery response deadlines; failed to fully comply with motions to ...

Tagged with: Civil Practice

The defendant-law firm may not immediately appeal a discovery sanctions order, either the monetary sanction portion or the portion ordering that the parties reconvene the depositions of a firm employee and a former firm employee (deponents) and that deponents answer ...

Tagged with: Civil Practice

Since plaintiff did not move to South Carolina until after his dealings with defendant – a Georgia bank – the bank’s dealings with plaintiff do not give South Carolina’s courts personal jurisdiction over the bank. The bank’s responses to plaintiff’s ...

Tagged with: Civil Practice

In December 2011, appellant’s sisters filed an action to partition real property they owned with appellant; the partition order was filed on July 19, 2013; this court remitted appellant’s appeal from the partition case on March 10, 2014; respondent Hammel ...

Tagged with: Civil Practice

There is conflicting evidence as to whether a defendant-employer’s acquisition of an independent contractor’s personal emails occurred unintentionally or intentionally. Consequently, defendants are not entitled to summary judgment under the Stored Communications Act. We vacate the district court’s grant of ...

Tagged with: Civil Practice

After the parties settled their case in mediation, the district court gave them 60 days within which to “reopen this action and restore it to the calendar” under Rule 60(b), FRCP. Even if plaintiff did not have enough time to ...

Tagged with: Civil Practice

In this action arising from a motor vehicle accident, once defense counsel (hired by the insurance company of the owner of the car which had been driven by the defendant named in plaintiff’s complaint) notified plaintiff that the named defendant ...

Tagged with: Civil Practice

Where plaintiff was represented by an experienced attorney who carefully and independently vetted plaintiff’s allegations and claims before determining she had a viable cause of action against respondents, and where there is no evidence that plaintiff harassed or otherwise coerced ...

Tagged with: Civil Practice