The whistleblower provisions of the federal False Claims Act, codified at U.S.C.A. § 3729-3733, are based on the premise that those on the inside often have the best information about illegal acts and fraud. The Act has been around for a long time, having been enacted during the Civil War to combat fraud…
Class action lawsuits can be very useful in that they allow a large group of people with similar legal disputes to bring their claims in a single lawsuit, thus reducing litigation costs and encouraging judicial economy. In order to proceed as a class, the would-be class representative(s) must obtain the…
The importance of the statute of limitations – the deadline for filing a lawsuit – cannot be overemphasized. If a case is not filed in a timely fashion, there can be no recovery unless the circumstances fit into a very small number of exceptions. In the recent case of Sims v.…
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you had a car accident due to the negligence of someone else but you had no way of identifying the negligent party? South Carolina law requires every motor vehicle owner to carry uninsured motorist (UM) insurance, which may allow you to file a…
In a class action lawsuit, the plaintiff attempts to seek justice against the defendant not only on his or her own behalf, but also on behalf of those similarly situated. Of course, it is up to the trial court to determine whether to certify the plaintiff’s suit as a class…
A stillbirth occurs when a baby dies after the 20th week of pregnancy. According to the March of Dimes, this tragic event happens in about one out of every 160 pregnancies in the United States. It can be caused by a number of factors, including birth defects, problems with the…
The United States government is a huge entity that cannot possibly be aware of every instance of fraud of which it is a victim. To increase the odds in the government’s favor, Congress passed the False Claims Act, which contains a qui tam provision through which a whistleblower may initiate a lawsuit…
In injury litigation, sometimes there is but a single defendant – the driver of a car or the owner of a small business, perhaps. Other times, however, there are multiple defendants and multiple claims. A seemingly simple case can quickly get complex. Defendants often resist being brought into a lawsuit and…
In a perfect world, the evidence in a lawsuit would be so obviously convincing in favor of one party or the other that a jury would be able to reach a quick and unanimous verdict. In the real world, however, a case in which the evidence is so clearly in one party’s…
Workers’ compensation laws are supposed to simplify the process by which an injured worker, or the family of an employee killed in an on-the-job accident, receives monetary compensation. Of course, the actual ease of the process depends upon several factors, and some cases can be much more complicated than it…