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Injured on the roads around Charleston? We take over the insurance fight and pursue every dollar South Carolina law allows you to claim.
A wreck on I-26 or the Ravenel Bridge rearranges your whole week. Maybe you woke up at MUSC. Maybe you drove yourself home from Trident and hurt far worse the next morning. Either way the bills start arriving, your car is sitting in a lot somewhere in North Charleston, and an adjuster is already calling with questions that are not as casual as they sound. You should not have to work out the legal side while you are still in pain.
Schiller and Hamilton Law Firm keeps a Charleston office at 1629 Meeting Street Road, and our car accident lawyers take cases from the peninsula, Mount Pleasant, West Ashley, James Island, Johns Island, Daniel Island, North Charleston, Summerville and Goose Creek. We know how Lowcountry traffic actually behaves, how the insurers writing policies here operate, and how these claims move through the Charleston County courts. We carry the pressure so you can concentrate on healing. The first conversation costs nothing and you owe no fee unless we recover money for you. Call 843-350-5420 and tell us what happened.
When someone else causes the collision, South Carolina law lets you ask for the money that puts you back where you were. What that adds up to depends on your injuries and your work, so we price out every category instead of stopping at the obvious ones.
Where the conduct was genuinely reckless, such as a drunk driver leaving downtown or a trucker who ignored the rules on rest, South Carolina law may also allow punitive damages. We will give you a straight read on what your claim is worth and then go get it.
Bringing in a lawyer should lighten the load, not add to it. Once you hire us, the calls, the paperwork, and the arguing become our problem.
We are paid on contingency, so we do well only when you do. Our incentives point the same direction as yours from day one.
Fault is not all or nothing in South Carolina, and the way it gets divided decides what you take home. The state follows modified comparative negligence, adopted by the South Carolina Supreme Court in Nelson v. Concrete Supply Company. You can recover as long as your share of the blame is no greater than the other side’s, which means 50 percent or less. At 51 percent you recover nothing at all.
Inside that limit, your award drops by your percentage. If a rear end collision on Rivers Avenue leaves you with 60,000 dollars in damages and a jury assigns you 25 percent of the fault, you collect 45,000 dollars.
That math is why an adjuster keeps circling back to your speed, your lane change, or whether you were looking at your phone. Every point of fault they hang on you comes off their check, and 51 points ends the claim outright. Beating back invented fault is much of what a Charleston car accident lawyer does. We lock down the evidence early, before the other side’s version of events hardens.
The two drivers named in the report are not always the only parties on the hook. Crashes here often involve a company vehicle, a rented car, or a stretch of road that was set up to fail. Finding every responsible party matters most when a single policy will not cover your injuries.
We trace every layer of coverage so your recovery is not capped by the first policy anyone hands us.
South Carolina sets a floor on liability insurance, and those figures shape what is available after a Charleston crash. Under Section 38-77-140 of the South Carolina Code, a policy must carry at least 25,000 dollars for bodily injury to one person, 50,000 dollars for bodily injury when two or more people are hurt in the same accident, and 25,000 dollars for property damage.
A single night in a hospital bed can pass those numbers. That is what makes uninsured motorist coverage so important. Section 38-77-150 requires it on every auto policy written in this state, and it steps in when the driver who hit you carried nothing at all. Underinsured motorist coverage, which insurers must offer you under Section 38-77-160, covers the gap when the other policy exists but runs out well before your treatment does.
Working out which policies apply, including coverage on your own vehicles and in your household, is some of the most valuable work done in the first weeks of a case. We look for every layer so a bare minimum policy does not quietly become your problem. If your own carrier stalls on an uninsured motorist claim, we hold it to the contract you have been paying for.
South Carolina puts a hard deadline on car accident lawsuits and it does not bend because you were still in treatment. Section 15-3-530 of the South Carolina Code gives you three years from the date of the crash to file a personal injury action. Miss it and the claim is gone no matter how strong it was.
Government defendants run on a different clock. If a city, Charleston County, or a state agency such as SCDOT is responsible, the South Carolina Tort Claims Act generally cuts the window to two years, though filing a verified claim within one year of the loss extends it to three. Those cases also carry their own filing requirements, and the rules are unforgiving.
Three years sounds generous until you watch a case age. Skid marks wash off in the next Lowcountry downpour, camera footage is overwritten within weeks, and witnesses passing through on vacation become impossible to find. Call us early and we will make sure the right deadline is calendared and protected.
Nothing stops you from handling a claim yourself. The problem is that the other side does this for a living, and the adjuster being pleasant on the phone is still measured on how little the company pays out. A Charleston car accident lawyer evens that out.
Schiller and Hamilton Law Firm keeps an office on Meeting Street Road at the upper end of the peninsula, close to I-26 and to the neighborhoods where these wrecks happen. Cases come to us from downtown, Mount Pleasant, West Ashley, James Island, North Charleston and Summerville. We handle the filings, the deadlines, the fault fight, and the negotiation, so your energy goes to treatment and your family instead of into an insurance file.
There is no downside to the call. The consultation is free, the fee is contingent, and you owe us nothing unless we recover money for you. No recovery means no fee. Call our Charleston car accident lawyers at 843-350-5420 and hand the rest of it to us.
Nothing out of pocket. Our fee is contingent, which means it comes out of a recovery and only if there is one. If we do not win, you owe no attorney fee. The first conversation is free either way, so finding out where your claim stands costs you nothing but the call.
Section 15-3-530 of the South Carolina Code gives you three years from the date of the collision for most personal injury suits. Claims against a city, Charleston County, or a state agency fall under the South Carolina Tort Claims Act, which generally allows two years, extended to three if you file a verified claim within one year. Deadlines differ by defendant, so call early.
Often, yes. South Carolina uses modified comparative negligence, so you can recover as long as your fault is no greater than the other side’s, meaning 50 percent or less, with your award reduced by your percentage. At 51 percent or more you recover nothing. Insurers push fault onto you for exactly that reason, which is why representation matters.
Your own policy likely answers. Section 38-77-150 requires uninsured motorist coverage on every auto policy written in South Carolina, and it exists for this exact situation. We review your policy, other household policies, and any further coverage in play so an uninsured or underinsured driver does not leave the bill with you.
Call us before you do. Those early calls are friendly by design, and the questions are built to draw out an admission about fault or to make your injuries sound minor. You are not required to give a recorded statement to the other driver’s insurer. Let our office field those calls so nothing you say is used to shrink your claim.
You owe nothing unless we win.
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Get a free, no obligation look at your Charleston claim. You pay no fee unless we win.
