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Fell on a wet floor, broken step, or uneven Charleston sidewalk? We find who is responsible.
Charleston is a walking city, and that is part of the problem. Brick sidewalks downtown settle and heave. Cobblestone shifts underfoot. King Street shops and restaurants crowd their entrances, hotel lobbies stay wet through a rainy afternoon, and the big stores on Sam Rittenberg Boulevard and Rivers Avenue mop aisles all day long. When an owner lets a hazard sit, somebody eventually goes down on it. South Carolina law lets that person ask the owner to answer for it.
Schiller and Hamilton Law Firm keeps an office at 1629 Meeting Street Road, and our Charleston slip and fall lawyers take these cases across the Lowcountry. A fall claim is a premises liability claim, so the same rules reach trip and fall injuries, stair and railing failures, pool and dock accidents, and assaults that better security could have stopped. The insurer on the other side will start by blaming the person who fell. We answer that with evidence. Call 843-350-5420 for a free consultation. No fee unless we win.
A slip and fall claim sits inside premises liability, and in South Carolina the duty you were owed depends on why you were on the property. Courts here still sort visitors into classes. An invitee, such as a shopper on King Street or a guest checking into a hotel, is owed the most: ordinary care to keep the place reasonably safe. A licensee, someone whose presence is allowed rather than invited, is owed reasonable care to warn of concealed dangers and reasonable care in activities carried on there. A trespasser is owed only that the owner not injure him willfully or wantonly. Children are handled separately.
So the opening questions in a Charleston case are practical ones. Were you a customer, a tenant, a short term rental guest, a delivery driver? Who actually controlled that floor, that stairwell, that garage deck? The answers set the standard the owner had to meet, and everything after that follows from them.
Our Charleston attorneys see the same settings come up over and over:
Tourist heavy venues raise the odds, because crowds hide hazards and staff are stretched thin. The question does not change. Was there a danger the owner should have dealt with?
Most Charleston slip and fall cases turn on notice. You generally have to show the owner or its staff put the hazard there, or had actual knowledge of it, or should have known about it because it sat long enough that a reasonable inspection would have caught it. That second version is called constructive notice. South Carolina courts have declined to let foreseeability alone stand in for it, so the proof has to be built.
That proof disappears fast. Store and garage video is often recorded over within days. Incident reports, sweep sheets, and maintenance logs get filed away or lost. Employees who saw the spill move on to other jobs. We send preservation letters early, request footage before it cycles, and pull the cleaning and inspection records that show how long the danger was there.
Photographs matter most of all, and they are the one piece you can protect yourself. Before anyone mops, sets out a cone, or repairs anything, photograph the hazard, the lighting, the floor around it, and your shoes. Collect names. A phone picture taken that day often outweighs everything else in the file.
Expect the insurer to put the fall on you. You were looking at your phone. The cone was right there. Anyone could see the cobblestone was uneven. On a Charleston street full of visitors, that argument gets used constantly.
South Carolina follows modified comparative negligence, adopted by the state Supreme Court in Nelson v. Concrete Supply Co. You can recover as long as your negligence is not greater than the defendant’s, meaning a 50 percent share or less, and your award is cut in proportion to your share. At 20 percent fault, a 100,000 dollar case pays 80,000 dollars. At 51 percent or more, you recover nothing.
Everything therefore rides on where that percentage lands, which is one more reason the early evidence matters. Photographs of dim lighting, a missing warning sign, or a step with no contrast strip do real work here. Our job is to keep the focus on what the owner failed to fix.
In Charleston the party that owns a building is often not the party running it, and more than one may share the blame. Depending on the facts, responsibility can rest with:
Leases, management agreements, and service contracts usually settle who owed what. Reading them is how you find every insurance policy that could pay. We work to name the right parties rather than the easiest one.
South Carolina gives you three years from the date of the injury to file most personal injury suits, under S.C. Code section 15-3-530(5). Miss that date and the courthouse closes, however clear the fault was.
Government property is its own track. If you fell at a city or county building, a public park, a school, or another government facility, the South Carolina Tort Claims Act applies. Section 15-78-110 bars the action unless it is commenced within two years of when the loss was or should have been discovered, stretched to three years only where a verified claim was filed under the Act first. Those rules are unforgiving, and Charleston has a great deal of public property.
There is also a practical deadline nobody prints in a statute book. Video is gone in weeks. Call while the evidence still exists.
These cases read as simple and rarely are. The owner has an insurer, the insurer has adjusters and defense counsel, and their first move is to argue the danger was open and obvious or that you were not watching. Taking that on while you are hurt is a poor trade.
Schiller and Hamilton Law Firm handles Charleston slip and fall and premises liability claims from our office at 1629 Meeting Street Road. We chase the video before it cycles, pull the records, talk to witnesses, deal with the adjusters, and press for the full value of the claim, including medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering. We work on a contingency fee, so nothing is due upfront and there is no fee unless we recover money for you. The consultation is free. Call 843-350-5420.
Nothing upfront. We take these cases on a contingency fee, so the fee comes out of the recovery and only if there is one. The first consultation is free, and it costs nothing to find out where you stand.
Three years from the date of injury in most cases, under S.C. Code section 15-3-530(5). Where a government body owns the property, the South Carolina Tort Claims Act applies and section 15-78-110 generally requires suit within two years, so call promptly.
South Carolina uses modified comparative negligence. You can recover if your negligence is not greater than the defendant’s, a 50 percent share or less, with the award reduced by your share. At 51 percent or more you recover nothing. That is why photographs, video, and witness names gathered early carry so much weight.
Generally that the owner created the hazard, knew of it, or should have known of it, failed to fix it or warn you, and that it caused your injury. The duty owed also depends on whether you were an invitee, a licensee, or a trespasser. Surveillance video, sweep logs, and incident reports are the usual proof.
Depending on the facts, the business, the building owner, a property management company, a tenant, a hotel or short term rental operator, or a maintenance contractor. Often more than one shares responsibility, and the leases and service contracts show who owed what.
No cost to you unless we recover.
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A free, no obligation look at your Charleston fall claim. Nothing is owed unless we recover.
