Top Individual South Carolina Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements

As court-appointed co-lead plaintiffs' counsel in AFFF MDL 2873, Paul J. Napoli of Napoli Shkolnik negotiated a settlement requiring 3M Company to pay up to $12.5 billion to public water systems contaminated by PFAS compounds in firefighting foam, the largest drinking-water settlement in American legal history.

As court-appointed co-lead counsel in AFFF MDL 2873, Paul J. Napoli of Napoli Shkolnik helped negotiate a $1.185 billion class settlement with DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva to compensate public water systems across the United States for PFAS contamination tied to firefighting foam.

A federal jury awarded $262.5 million after finding that a defective rear liftgate latch on a 1985 Dodge Caravan caused a six-year-old boy to be ejected and killed in a 1994 crash; the punitive damages were later reversed on appeal and the case settled confidentially in 2001.

A Richland County jury unanimously awarded $32 million, including $10 million in punitive damages against Kraft Heinz, after finding that secondhand asbestos fibers carried home on work clothes caused Kathy Weist's fatal mesothelioma diagnosis.

Kenneth Berger secured a $26 million settlement for the family of a three-year-old who suffered severe chemical burns at Caribbean Resort and Villas in Myrtle Beach after a pool employee falsified chlorine records for years.

Christopher Pracht, now with Alexander Shunnarah Trial Attorneys' South Carolina team, was trial counsel for the estate of Zerihun Wolde when an Horry County jury returned a $20.73 million verdict against Lack's Beach Service, the private company staffing lifeguards on the stretch of Myrtle Beach where Wolde drowned in a rip current in 2018. The South Carolina Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed the verdict in July 2025, and the case is credited with ending the dual-role lifeguarding model on Grand Strand beaches.

A federal jury awarded $17 million to the surviving relatives of a Canadian Army private, his wife, and their infant son killed when an XPO Express 18-wheeler plowed into slowed construction-zone traffic on Interstate 95 near Florence, South Carolina.

A South Carolina warehouse worker suffered permanent lumbar spinal injuries when a commercial trailer's improperly installed landing gear buckled during loading, sending a jury to award Anthony Avery $7.48 million in compensatory damages and $2.8 million in punitive damages against MG Logistics, Inc.

After multiple York County bars served alcohol to a teenager who then killed his 22-year-old passenger in a crash, Kenneth Berger secured an $8.35 million wrongful death settlement on behalf of the victim's family.

A 21-year-old driver who was overserved at two Spartanburg bars struck and killed two cousins at over 70 mph, leading to a $7.36 million wrongful death settlement paid by the bars and the driver.

The City of North Charleston paid $6.5 million to the family of Walter Scott, an unarmed man shot in the back by a police officer after a routine traffic stop, in what attorney L. Chris Stewart described as the largest pre-lawsuit settlement in South Carolina history.

A Berkeley County apartment complex that failed to equip its pool gates with code-required latching hardware settled the wrongful death claim of a three-year-old boy's family for six million dollars.

Joye Law Firm recovered $5 million for the estate of a Goodwill custodian killed when a terminal tractor with broken headlights made an illegal U-turn and struck her in a Joint Base Charleston parking lot.

A South Carolina man rear-ended by a drunk driver who fled the scene recovered $3.6 million after the driver's employer disputed vehicle ownership and scope of employment, with cervical fusion and knee surgery documented.

A St. Louis man who suffered permanent bilateral brain damage after an Audi SUV ran him over on a Charleston sidewalk in 2017 settled the resulting federal lawsuit for $3.5 million in July 2020.

A federal jury awarded $2.95 million to the estate of David Allan Woods, a 50-year-old South Carolina detainee who died of gastrointestinal bleeding in 2010 after jail officers repeatedly ignored his deteriorating condition.

A Dorchester County jury awarded $2.2 million to a Summerville plumber who suffered cervical disc herniation and spinal cord compression after being rear-ended at a traffic light, believed to be the largest automobile accident verdict in the county's history.

A plumber rear-ended at a Dorchester County stoplight won a $2.2 million jury verdict in 2018, then secured a $2.15 million global settlement the following year after Geico faced a bad-faith lawsuit for refusing to tender its $50,000 policy limits before trial.

A Lexington County jury awarded $2 million to Donna Roland, 60, after she tripped on a three-inch gap in a county sidewalk and broke her arm in two places while dropping off an absentee ballot during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A loaded dump truck whose brakes had been flagged for replacement the day before crossed into oncoming traffic and struck an active-duty Air Force servicemember head-on, fracturing his hip, leg, and arm; the case settled for $1.225 million in April 2023.

A Navy veteran who was sent home from the Charleston VA with back pain developed a spinal epidural abscess that went untreated for days, leaving him permanently paralyzed in both legs; the Law Office of Kenneth E. Berger recovered a $1 million federal settlement.

A three-year-old boy was found unconscious and hanging from a jump rope at a Lancaster, South Carolina daycare in September 2013, suffering a traumatic brain injury from oxygen deprivation; his family recovered a $1 million settlement in 2016.

George Sink, P.A. Injury Lawyers attorneys E. Alan Kennington and Ellen McCloy won a judgment reforming a commercial trucking policy so that client Francis Clark Antley, a trucker seriously hurt in a hit-and-run, could pursue up to $1 million in uninsured motorist coverage instead of the $15,000 minimum the insurer claimed applied. The South Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed in a published 2002 opinion, Antley v. Nobel Insurance Co., holding the insurer never made a meaningful offer of additional UM coverage.

A Richland County jury awarded $897,500 to a 28-year-old Army soldier, including $538,500 in punitive damages, after a chain-reaction rear-end crash on I-26 left him with shoulder and back injuries that forced a medical discharge.