In 2021, employment law attorney Taylor Dewberry was named Smith Anderson’s first chief diversity officer. Her practice focuses on employment-related counseling and defending employers against claims involving discrimination, wrongful discharge, retaliation, harassment, and civil rights claims.   After graduating with honors ...

Tagged with: Diversity

  Statistics show that South Carolina’s courts are not as diverse as the populations they serve. Several studies conducted in the last 20 years have suggested that beyond increasing public trust in the judiciary, creating a more proportionally diverse judicial ...

Tagged with: Diversity

Even though plaintiff alleges that she collided with a U-Haul rental truck in South Carolina, since the evidence indicates that the truck had been stolen from a U-Haul lot in Charlotte – owned by recently added defendant U-Haul Co. of ...

Tagged with: Diversity

The complaint’s ad damnum clause limits the damages sought to $75,000. However, plaintiff also seeks nonmonetary relief under S.C. Code Ann. § 37-10-105(c), which could render defendant unable to foreclose on plaintiff’s property or to collect the outstanding mortgage balance. ...

Tagged with: Diversity

Lee v. Walmart Store #795 (Lawyers Weekly No. 002-188-17, 7 pp.) (David Norton, J.) 1:17-cv-00507; D.S.C. Holding: On the day that South Carolina plaintiff Marie Lee was struck by football helmets falling off a shelf in the Barnwell Walmart’s sporting ...

Tagged with: Diversity

Aung v. GEICO (Lawyers Weekly No. 002-153-17, 8 pp.) (Patrick Michael Duffy, J.) 9:17-cv-00856; D.S.C. Holding: Under South Carolina law (1) generally, employees may be held personally liable for torts they commit in the scope of their employment, even if ...

Tagged with: Diversity

Bank of New York Mellon v. White (Lawyers Weekly No. 002-152-17, 7 pp.) (Joseph Anderson Jr., J.) 3:17-cv-00693; D.S.C. Holding: Even if this action arises out of a breached settlement agreement that ended a case previously before this court, defendant ...

Tagged with: Diversity

Judges’ chambers across the Carolinas these days are home to a more diverse crowd than before, varying, of course, from one jurisdiction to the next. But a group of jurists who spoke with Lawyers Weekly echoed a very similar sentiment: ...

Tagged with: Diversity

Last month, Sharita Whitaker, an attorney with Smith Anderson in Raleigh, North Carolina, traveled to the Yale Club of New York City for the Chambers and Partners’ inaugural Chambers Diversity Awards. She walked away as the winner in the Future ...

Tagged with: Diversity

A May 2015 bulletin from the National Association for Law Placement notes that women and minorities have made “small gains” in representation among law firm partners in recent years. However, among all legal employers listed in NALP’s 2014-2015 directory, only ...

Tagged with: Diversity