— Outcomes / Premises Liability
Liability lean alone produced a 20× spread in stratified-weighted median damages.
On a contested slip-and-fall fact pattern fielded against 100 verified Charleston tri-county respondents, the stratified-weighted median open-ended damages awarded by respondents leaning plaintiff ($50,000) was 20× the weighted median awarded by respondents leaning defense ($2,500). Liability framing functions as a damages multiplier, not a binary verdict variable.
Also from the data:
- Liability split: 43% “about equal,” 32% shopper, 20% store — confirming the fact pattern is genuinely contested.
- Decisive-fact split: 41% cited the shopper looking at her phone; 38% cited the misplaced wet-floor sign — plaintiff-fault and defendant-negligence framings tie within four points.
- 57% placed total damages under $25,000 even after being shown $42,000 in medical bills and lost wages — a strong defendant-leaning anchor cluster.
— Outcomes / Defendant Identity
Open-ended damages medians ran 3× higher against a corporate trucking defendant than against a retail store in comparable clear-liability scenarios.
Charleston-area respondents attributed primary fault to a commercial trucking defendant 90% of the time in a rear-end MVA scenario (n=39 of 100 target, preliminary), vs. 20% to a retail-store defendant in a comparable slip-and-fall (n=100, weighted). Median damages: $150,000 vs. $50,000 respectively — a 4.42× spread in attribution. Notably, only 5% cited corporate identity as the decisive fact — the effect operates through damages valuation, not articulated bias.
— Jury / Juror Attitudes Baseline
On 50/50 evidence, Charleston respondents lean plaintiff 5.1-to-1 over defense — and 67.7% reject the “company can afford it” framing in damages decisions.
Asked how they would lean if evidence about fault were roughly 50/50, 33.0% of Charleston-area respondents would lean toward the injured person; 6.4% would lean toward the defendant. Separately, 67.7% said verdicts should be based only on harm caused, not on a defendant's ability to pay — contradicting the conventional “deep pockets” framing. (n=100, stratified-weighted.)
— Marketing / Brand Recognition
TV and billboard presence ranks as the #1 selection criterion in Charleston (mean 6.93/9) — verdict and settlement track record ranks dead last (3.39/9).
Asked to rate selection criteria on a 1–9 importance scale, Charleston-area respondents (n=100) ranked TV/billboard presence highest, followed by Charleston longevity and online reviews. Verdict track record came in last. Morgan & Morgan dominates both aided recall (85.4%) and top-of-mind selection (30%) — the best recognition-to-call-first conversion in the market. Joye Law Firm (83.9% recognized → 2.6% top-of-mind) is widely known but rarely the first call.
— Marketing Landscape
Charleston PI paid acquisition runs almost entirely through Google.
Across 35 plaintiffs' personal injury firms operating in tri-county Charleston, paid Meta inventory totaled 44 active ad creatives across four firms; paid Google inventory totaled 1,112 active ad creatives across fourteen firms.
— Litigation / Case-Mix Snapshot
Of 219 unique cases on Charleston Common Pleas motion dockets in a 22-day window, 40.6% are personal-injury cases. MVA accounts for 13.7% — the largest single category.
Charleston Common Pleas docket snapshot, captured 2026-05-12, covering rosters scheduled 2026-05-07 → 2026-05-29. PI cases (MVA + Premises + MedMal + Other PI) account for 89 of 219 unique cases. Motion-type mix is dominated by Summary Judgment (33 motions) and Compel (66 motions). Notably, of the top 10 Charleston PI firms by current ad activity, only 1 appear in the litigation snapshot (Yarborough Applegate) — the firms most visible in marketing are largely absent from motion dockets, a pattern consistent with pre-suit settlement practice and requiring additional captures to confirm.
— Jury Landscape
Owner-occupancy is the single strongest demographic correlate of partisan vote share.
Owner-occupied housing rates climbed monotonically with Republican lean across Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester precincts — from 49% in Strong Democratic precincts to 81% in Strong Republican precincts. Across the four lean categories, owner-occupancy outperformed every other demographic variable tested.