Author Archives: Jay Butchko
Can Injured Students Sue Their University For Premises Liability?
One day in April 2019, Pauline Harrison of Chesterfield was walking on a sidewalk on the campus of Coastal Carolina University in Conway. She tripped over a piece of raised concrete on the sidewalk and fell, suffering serious injuries. News reports about her premises liability lawsuit did not give details about the nature of… Read More »
Determining Fault For A Car Accident Is More Complicated Than It Sounds
South Carolina law follows the rule of modified comparative negligence when determining who is eligible to file a car accident lawsuit. This means that, as long as you were less than 50 percent at fault for the accident, you have the right to seek compensation from the other driver, or any other party that… Read More »
What Do Tier I, Tier II, And Tier III Mean In Camp Lejeune Lawsuits?
Evidence is as important in civil lawsuits, including personal injury cases, as it is in criminal trials and investigations, but how the courts base their decisions on that evidence is different. In criminal cases, the prosecution must convince 12 jurors of the defendant’s guilt, and the jurors must be very certain of it, or… Read More »
Drunk Driving Accidents In South Carolina: Risks And Remedies
Alcohol plays a role in approximately one third of traffic accidents that involve serious injury or death, despite that the number of drunk driving accidents has declined sharply since the enactment of drunk driving laws, and that the ubiquity of seatbelts and airbags has increased the likelihood of drivers and passengers emerging from motor… Read More »
Why Do Car Insurance Companies Deny Personal Injury Claims?
After a car accident, it seems like you have to wait for weeks, or even months, and jump through numerous hoops before the insurance company sends you any money. You fill out forms; some of them seem to be duplicates of forms you have already filled out, and this is not just your imagination. … Read More »
Can You File A Camp Lejeune Lawsuit For Soft Tissue Cancer?
Families harmed by the water contamination at Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base in North Carolina have been in pursuit of justice for decades. From the 1950s until the 1980s, chemicals used to clean uniforms and equipment used at the base infiltrated the wells that provided the drinking water for Camp Lejeune residents; the wells… Read More »
How Can You Tell Whether The Settlement That The Insurance Company Is Offering Is Fair?
In a memorable scene in the novel A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, set just before and during the French Revolution, a nobleman’s horse-drawn carriage strikes a child in a crowded street, and the nobleman throws a coin into the crowd, thinking that this will appease the child’s family. In other words,… Read More »
The Dangers Of Drowsy Driving
Every year at Thanksgiving, radio DJs trot out those same old jokes about how eating turkey at Thanksgiving dinner makes people sleepy, allegedly because of tryptophan. This claim has been debunked; turkey contains no more tryptophan than many other foods, and there are plenty of other reasons to be sleepy after Thanksgiving dinner? Anyone… Read More »
Can Camp Lejeune Veterans Get Compensation For Hepatic Steatosis Claims?
Your liver is one of the many parts of your body that you never think about unless it malfunctions. In fact, if you have never had a serious liver disease, you probably only know the approximate location of your liver (somewhere in your upper abdomen) and can’t say for certain which organs are directly… Read More »
Spartanburg County Woman Faces Criminal Charges For Fatal Christmas Eve DUI Accident
All defendants in criminal cases have the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty at the conclusion of a trial or after entering a guilty plea. By this logic, you might expect that everyone who has been accused of a crime but not yet convicted of it should be able to be free… Read More »