On the morning of April 12, 2016, it had rained all night — and was still raining — when the Dodge Ram being driven by defendant Duston Melton crossed the centerline on U.S. Highway 15 in Bennettsville and crashed head-on ...

Tagged with: Car Crash Verdicts & Settlements

What do you get when you sprinkle a little inexperience and a little malice on an impaired driving arrest and prosecution? An award of more than $200,000 for a college professor who doesn’t drink. A Richland County jury made its ...

Tagged with: false arrest Malicious Prosecution Verdicts & Settlements

The top results of a Google search for “Ralph Williams of Orangeburg” notify the world that he was arrested for attempting to rape a mentally handicapped patient at an assisted living facility where he worked.

Tagged with: Defamation Jury Verdict Verdicts & Settlements

A former U.S. Marine who asked for $105 million in damages after he was hit by a drunk driver will walk away with less than $30,000 after a jury trial that the defendant failed to attend. Christopher Payton was parked on the side of the road early one morning in November 2007 when Joseph Platts plowed his car into Payton’s van at a speed of nearly 70 mph. Platts’s blood alcohol level was later measured at .206, and a friend of Payton’s who saw the accident testified that he believed Platts was racing another car at the time of the accident. Platts was uninsured.

Tagged with: Verdicts & Settlements

A Greenville restaurateur and owner of No Regrets Properties presumably has no regrets after a jury awarded him a verdict of over $64,000 against a national restaurant franchisor and rejected the national company’s $4 million counterclaim against him.

Tagged with: Verdicts & Settlements

The overall size of the national Top 10 Jury Verdicts rose again in 2012. The average increased by almost $20 million, rising from just under $184 million to $203 million. By contrast, the average for 2011 increased by around $27 million over 2010.

Tagged with: Verdicts & Settlements

A downtown Columbia bar’s insurer has paid $975,000 to settle a wrongful death lawsuit alleging that the bar over-served the son of a former University of South Carolina head football coach before he got behind the wheel and killed a pedestrian.

Tagged with: Verdicts & Settlements wrongful death

The heirs of a man who was gunned down in Charleston have won a $9 million bench verdict against his imprisoned killer. Collecting that kind of money from a prisoner serving a 20-year sentence will be difficult, if not impossible, but the verdict represented a satisfying moral victory, said John L. Duffy III, an attorney for the victim’s 4-year-old son and his mother, Shonda Gennings.

Tagged with: Verdicts & Settlements Voluntary Manslaughter wrongful death

A divided South Carolina Supreme Court ruling that lets the Department of Transportation avoid paying a $300,000 jury verdict in a wrongful death case could have a chilling effect on settlements statewide. In a 4-1 opinion filed Nov. 7, the majority affirmed a trial court’s decision to cover the verdict against the DOT with an earlier $305,000 settlement payment from the agency’s two co-defendants.

Tagged with: Verdicts & Settlements

An Aiken County jury has awarded $2.9 million to the estate of a woman who was killed when a road grader caused a motorcycle driven by her husband, on which she was a passenger, to wreck.

Tagged with: verdict Verdicts & Settlements