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Permanent injuries are valued over a lifetime, not a hospital stay. We build the proof of what yours will cost.
A catastrophic injury does not end when the hospital discharges you. Families in the Charleston area usually meet the real problem weeks later, once the trauma team at MUSC has done its work and the questions turn to rehabilitation, attendant care, a house that no longer fits the person living in it, and an income that may not come back. The claim has to account for all of that, not for the bills that have already arrived.
Schiller and Hamilton Law Firm handles these cases from our office at 1629 Meeting Street Road in Charleston. The value of a permanent injury is not obvious from a medical file, and no insurer is going to develop it on your behalf, so we build that proof ourselves with the physicians, life care planners, and economists the case requires. For a free consultation, call (843) 350-5420. We work on a contingency fee, which means no attorney fee unless we recover for you.
Catastrophic is not a label for any bad injury. It describes harm that does not resolve. The person who leaves the hospital is not going to be restored to health in six months, and the injury sets a new permanent baseline for work, independence, and daily care, with medical need attached to it for years or for life.
The cases that reach that threshold around Charleston tend to be the ones the trauma service already knows. Spinal cord injuries ending in paraplegia or quadriplegia. Traumatic brain injuries that alter memory, temperament, and judgment even when later scans look unremarkable. Amputations, at the scene or after a failed attempt at limb salvage. Severe burns, which in this state are treated at the South Carolina Burn Center at MUSC Health, the only inpatient burn center in South Carolina. Multiple fractures needing staged surgery, hardware, and later revision. Crush injuries from industrial and cargo equipment.
What unites them is that the claim has to be valued forward rather than backward. The bills already in hand are the smallest part of the number. The question an adjuster or a Charleston County jury eventually has to answer is what the next several decades will cost, and nobody answers that without evidence built for the purpose.
The most expensive mistake in a catastrophic case is settling before anyone has priced the future. An adjuster can total the emergency department, the surgical admission, and a handful of follow ups within weeks, and that figure looks like a great deal of money to a family that has stopped earning. It is almost never what the injury actually costs.
A life care plan answers the real question. A life care planner works from the treating physicians and builds an itemized schedule of what the person will need and when: revision surgeries, physical and occupational therapy, medication, catheter and wound supplies, attendant or skilled nursing hours, wheelchairs and prosthetics with their replacement intervals, and psychological care. Each item is priced against what it costs in this region rather than a national average.
Housing and transportation belong in the plan, and in the Lowcountry they are not small line items. Making an older Charleston house usable from a wheelchair can mean a ramp or lift, widened doorways, a roll in shower, and reworked kitchen and bath heights, complicated further where the home is elevated for flood clearance or falls under historic district review. A vehicle may need hand controls or a lift.
An economist then converts the plan and the interrupted career into present value, accounting for medical inflation and for the earning capacity the injury removed. Those two experts together turn a lifetime of need into a number that can be proved.
Evidence in these cases has a short shelf life. A tractor trailer control module gets overwritten, a wrecked vehicle goes to salvage, a terminal or a store cycles its video within days, and a scene on I-26 or I-526 is swept and reopened in hours. Preservation letters go out before anyone has finished reading the collision report.
From there the work runs on two tracks. Liability: the Highway Patrol or Charleston Police file, a scene inspection, download of any available crash data, driver qualification and hours of service records in a commercial case, maintenance histories, and a reconstruction engineer where speed or sequence is disputed. On a port terminal, shipyard, or construction site it widens to contractors, equipment owners, and whoever controlled the premises.
Damages: the complete treatment record from MUSC and every rehabilitation and outpatient provider, neuropsychological testing where a brain injury is involved, vocational assessment, and the life care and economic work described above. We also collect the ordinary evidence of what changed at home, because that is what a jury remembers.
It is all assembled for trial in the Charleston County Court of Common Pleas or federal court here. Cases genuinely ready to be tried draw better offers.
South Carolina uses modified comparative negligence, adopted by the state Supreme Court in Nelson v. Concrete Supply Co. for causes of action arising on or after July 1, 1991. An injured person may recover as long as his or her negligence is not greater than the defendant’s, and the award is then reduced in proportion to that share of fault. Where there is more than one defendant, the plaintiff’s negligence is compared against their combined negligence rather than each one separately.
In practice this creates a cliff. At 50 percent fault a catastrophically injured client still recovers half. At 51 percent the recovery is nothing. When the full value of a case runs into seven figures, the defense has an enormous incentive to move a few percentage points, and it will spend real money trying.
Expect arguments that you were speeding, distracted, in the wrong lane, or somewhere you should not have been. One argument the defense cannot make is the seat belt. Under S.C. Code Section 56-5-6540(C), a violation of the safety belt article is not negligence per se or contributory negligence and is not admissible as evidence in a civil action. Everything else is contested ground, which is why the scene and reconstruction work matters as much as the medical proof.
South Carolina does not cap damages in an ordinary injury case. The noneconomic damages limits in Title 15, Chapter 32 apply to medical malpractice, not to a highway crash or a workplace injury. Punitive damages are limited under Section 15-32-530 to the greater of three times compensatory damages or $500,000, with higher limits in some circumstances and no limit in others. What usually caps a catastrophic recovery is not the law. It is how much insurance exists.
The statutory minimum auto policy in this state is $25,000 per person, $50,000 per accident, and $25,000 property damage under Section 38-77-140. Set against a life care plan, that is a rounding error. So the work is finding every other layer. Uninsured motorist coverage is mandatory here. Underinsured motorist coverage is not, but insurers must offer it up to the limits of your own liability coverage under Section 38-77-160, and UIM on your policy, a resident relative’s policy, or the vehicle you occupied often matters more than the defendant’s policy does.
Beyond auto there may be an employer with a commercial or umbrella policy, a second at fault driver, a vehicle or component manufacturer, a premises owner, or a contractor. Where a government vehicle or agency is involved, the Tort Claims Act caps recovery at $300,000 per person and $600,000 per occurrence, which changes strategy from the first week.
Most South Carolina injury lawsuits must be filed within three years of the injury under S.C. Code Section 15-3-530. Miss it and the claim is gone, however severe the injury or however clear the fault. Wrongful death carries the same three years, measured from the date of death.
Claims against a government defendant are different and much tighter. Under the South Carolina Tort Claims Act, Section 15-78-110, an action is barred unless it is commenced within two years of when the loss was or should have been discovered, extended to three years only if a verified claim was filed with the agency first. That reaches a lot of catastrophic cases: a county or municipal vehicle, a state agency driver, a public facility, a road defect. The two year clock is easy to lose while a family is still living in an ICU waiting room.
Deadlines aside, delay costs you evidence rather than time. Vehicles are destroyed, video overwrites, witnesses move, and the early record tying the injury to the event stops being easy to assemble. There is no reason to wait for treatment to finish before a lawyer starts working, and several good reasons not to.
Clients are often surprised that a case this serious does not settle quickly. The reason is medical rather than tactical. Future cost cannot be projected until the injury reaches maximum medical improvement, or at least until the treating physicians can say with confidence what the long term picture is. Settling before that point means guessing, and the guess is always low.
The other reason is that the defense treats a seven figure exposure very differently from a soft tissue claim. Expect independent medical examinations, surveillance, their own retained experts, a line by line fight over the life care plan, and a coverage investigation on their side that mirrors ours. Answering that properly takes time.
In the meantime we keep the case moving and keep you informed, coordinating records, protecting against liens and health insurance subrogation that would otherwise eat the net recovery later, and getting the expert work done early enough to be useful.
If someone in your family has a catastrophic injury from a crash, a fall, or a workplace incident in the Charleston area, call (843) 350-5420. The consultation is free and there is no attorney fee unless we recover for you.
No single statutory definition controls an ordinary injury lawsuit. In practice the word describes permanent harm that changes what a person can do for a living and for themselves: spinal cord injury and paralysis, traumatic brain injury, amputation, severe burns, and multiple fractures needing staged surgery. What matters legally is not the label but the proof of what the injury will require, and cost, across a lifetime.
Three years from the date of injury for most claims, under S.C. Code Section 15-3-530. If the defendant is a government entity, the South Carolina Tort Claims Act, Section 15-78-110, bars the action after two years, extended to three only where a verified claim was filed with the agency first. Because the government deadline is shorter and easy to miss, work out early whether a public vehicle, agency, or property is involved.
Yes, as long as your share of the fault is not greater than the defendant’s. South Carolina follows modified comparative negligence under Nelson v. Concrete Supply Co., and your award is reduced by your percentage of fault. At more than 50 percent you recover nothing. Note that under Section 56-5-6540(C), not wearing a seat belt is not contributory negligence and is not admissible against you in a civil action.
Not in an ordinary injury case. The noneconomic damages caps in Title 15, Chapter 32 apply to medical malpractice. Punitive damages are limited under Section 15-32-530 to the greater of three times compensatory damages or $500,000, with higher limits or none in specified circumstances, and claims against government entities are capped separately by the Tort Claims Act. The practical ceiling is usually available insurance, which is why we hunt for every policy.
We handle catastrophic injury cases on a contingency fee, so there is nothing to pay up front and no attorney fee unless we recover for you. The initial consultation is free and carries no obligation. Call our Charleston office at (843) 350-5420, or find us at 1629 Meeting Street Road, Charleston, SC 29405, to talk through what happened.
No attorney fee unless we recover.
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