Protection from Domestic Abuse

Protection from Domestic Abuse

April 12th, 2023

Court of Appeals rejects textualist interpretation of South Carolina’s domestic abuse statute

The April 12, 2023, Court of Appeals opinion in Taylor v. Taylor, 439 S.C. 272, 886 S.E.2d 716 (Ct.App. 2023), attempts to fill an obvious gap in the definition of household member in South Carolina’s Protection from Domestic Abuse statute.  Taylor decided that a child of one party can obtain an order of protection from […]

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Protection from Domestic Abuse

February 13th, 2018

Should the law differentiate mutual combat from domestic abuse

I recently attended the South Carolina Bar’s annual guardian ad litem training. One of the presenters discussed “Domestic Violence and its Impact on Children.” Her oral presentation, but not her written materials, differentiated two types of domestic violence. The first–and this is not how she labeled it–is what one might think of a low-level mutual […]

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Protection from Domestic Abuse

November 18th, 2017

South Carolina Supreme Court revives application of domestic abuse statute to unmarried cohabitants

On July 26, 2017 the South Carolina Supreme Court, in the case of Doe v. State, 421 S.C. 490, 808 S.E.2d 807 (2017), remedied the equal protection infirmity of a Domestic Abuse statute that granted protection to opposite sex cohabitants but denied that protection to same sex cohabitants by denying that protection to all unmarried cohabitants. […]

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Protection from Domestic Abuse

August 8th, 2017

Equal protection challenge to domestic abuse statute leaves law in chaos

N.B., as anticipated below, the Supreme Court subsequently modified its decision and revived the application of the domestic abuse statute to unmarried cohabitants.  See South Carolina Supreme Court revives application of domestic abuse statute to unmarried cohabitants. The July 26, 2017 Supreme Court opinion in Doe v. State has left South Carolina’s Protection from Domestic Abuse […]

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Protection from Domestic Abuse

June 15th, 2010

The link between animal cruelty and domestic violence

When I was in my late teens my best friend was a brilliant, iconoclastic, Catholic, conservative, whose parents has escaped Communist Poland and lived in Apartheid South Africa before emigrating to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.  My political beliefs were not nearly as well thought out or firmly held but I came from […]

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