This post looks at South Carolina personal injury settlements and jury award payouts. This post has old settlement and jury award statistics but sample settlement amounts and jury awards as recent as January 2022.
Median jury awards in motor vehicle tort trials in South Carolina dropped to $17,000 in 2005 from $41,000 in 1992. This underscores to me that auto accident verdicts are not driving car insurance rates.
Interesting car accident case reported in South Carolina Lawyers Weekly. Plaintiff was a passenger in a car driven by his grandmother, and a hit-and-run driver T-boned them at an intersection. It was a small accident case: medical bills totaling $3,230 and lost wages totaling $4,352.
State Farm, standing by its insured as always because, you know, you are in good hands, offered $6,500. Typical. At trial, State Farm’s lawyer argued during opening statements that the jury could determine whether what the Plaintiff had already been paid was sufficient. Plaintiff’s accident lawyer objected, and the trial judge sustained the objection and later instructed the jury to disregard the setoff argument in its deliberations because any setoff would be handled by the judge.
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The Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog has a post on a Maryland Daily Record article looking at how President-Elect Barack Obama might change the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals which includes Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
I’ve spent far more time thinking about how President Obama will change the country than his impact on lawyers or even my own clients. But President Obama will nominate judges that I will stand before and argue. While I think President Bush has nominated a lot of good judges, this fact makes me a little happier to be a lawyer today. I’m not saying every plaintiffs’ lawyer will have a better shot at success in front of judges nominated by Obama. I just think they are likely to be fair and reasonable judges.
Piedmont Medical Center, the hospital of choice for many South Carolina residents living in York County, Chester County, and Lancaster County settled a wrongful death medical malpractice lawsuit that would have gone to trial next month. According to Rock Hill Herald, a woman had ear surgery and went to the emergency room at Piedmont Medical Center two days later, complaining of numbness in her left leg. The lawsuit contends that a doctor failed to order a blood test that would have properly diagnosed her condition (I’m not sure exactly what the condition was). Unfortunately, the woman slipped into a coma and died. Her family brought a wrongful death medical malpractice lawsuit against the doctor, the emergency room group at the hospital, and Piedmont. The hospital paid the bulk settlement, which was in excess of $1.2 million.
Lawsuit Information Center