Legal Question in Personal Injury in South Carolina

My lawyer was not prepared for my case and we lost the case. The judge even asked if he was considering purger concerning the two witnesses who lied, he even turned that down and decided not to meet with me before the trail . The accident was 3 1.2 years ago and he was not familiar with the depositions. This was a jury trial and the judge said 12 or nothing. There was no reason for this to be lost. He was not ready and shaking the entire time and did not ask any more questions of the witnesses. He did a bad job and I am having a $57,440.00 lost because of it. He also misplaced documents I gave him in reference to the case. Is there anything I can to?


Asked on 9/13/12, 7:08 am

1 Answer from Attorneys

Robert Johnston Law Offices of Robert J. Johnston

I'm assuming this was a Personal Injury case, based on you stating that the accident was 3 1/2 years ago. If so, then you may want to have another Personal Injury lawyer review the entire file and trial transcripts to advise you where you stand as far as any sort of professional liability claim. As a Personal Injury lawyer with trial experience, I do that. But please be careful not to spend your money unnecessarily. You will need a professional opinion if you should seek a professional malpractice claim, and that is very costly. A professional liability claim requires profession/expert testimony. Just like in a medical malpractice claim. In those cases, you can only proceed agianst a doctor with the assistance of other doctors. First you would need to have the entire file and trial record reviewed. That along with all of the pleadings (complaint & answer and motions and other court filed documents), the depositions, the attorney's entire file, medical records, and whatever else exists, could require an unpredictable amount of time. Even then there is not guarantees. Reason is, to bring a malpractice claim, you would need to not only prove malpractice, but you would also have to prove the outcome of the court case would have been different. If a lawyer was to charge you $10,000 I could very easily see how that amount could be justified by the tremendous amount of research and reviewing it would take. So you need to be very sure that you are comfortable with such an expense, as it would have to be paid by most attorneys in advance, since such an undertaking could not be done on a contingency, in the event that it turns out to not be reasonably recoverable. I hate to sound negative. I'm just trying to be fair and open with you on the difficulties involved in this.

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Answered on 9/13/12, 9:22 am


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