Brings The Hopeful Spirit of his Namesake to his Clients Who Know He’ll Go The Distance to Get Them What They Deserve

By Jonathan Widran

Because of his unique, conversation starting last name, Gary Christmas says it took a while to even get a pizza delivered when he first moved from his hometown of Columbia, South Carolina to Charleston to start his own law firm.

Since the late 90s, when he and his partner Ladson F. Howell, Jr. launched their personal injury law firm, it’s been Howell and Christmas year round for thousands of clients whose lives have been altered by everything from automobile and truck/semi-truck accidents to boating accidents, brain injuries, spinal injuries, drunk driving accidents, spinal injuries and sexual abuse. With over 30 years of combined legal experience, the Charleston injury lawyers represent accident victims and injured workers. They are dedicated to protecting the rights of the injured and their families, including representing those injured on the job under the South Carolina Workers’ Compensation Act, the Federal Longshoreman and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act and Defense Base Act. They also represent clients who have been hurt as a result of negligence by retail stores, bars, hotels, landlords and apartments, wrongful death and other cases where there are victims who suffer injuries caused by the negligence of others.

Christmas is a member of the South Carolina Workers’ Compensation Education Association; the Workers’ Compensation Section of the South Carolina Bar, where he is a council member; the Workers’ Injury Law and Advocacy Group (WILG) where he serves on the State Legislative Committee and the South Carolina Injured Workers’ Advocates (IWA) where he serves as Secretary of the organization and as Chairman of the Brief Bank Committee. He is a member of the American Association of Justice, the South Carolina Association of Justice, the United States Supreme Court Historical Society and the Small Business Chamber of Commerce.

He is a member of the South Carolina Bar and Charleston County Bar Associations and serves as a Mentor for the Lawyer Mentoring Pilot Program. He is also a Certified Circuit Court Mediator, has tried more than 200 cases, concentrating on legally complex issues, and has represented numerous clients in appellate practice including several appearances before the South Carolina Appeals Courts.

Growing up in Columbia, Christmas was steeped in the law from his adolescence on. After her divorce, his mom, who raised him and his sister as a single parent, went to night school and became a court reporter. Christmas earned his allowance by proofreading all of her depositions. Most of these were from personal injury or workers’ comp cases, and he let his imagination run wild, turning the lawyers who conducted the depositions into superheroes in his young mind. “What they were doing seemed extremely important and inspired me to become a lawyer,” he says. “Being exposed to personal injury law had a deep impact on my desire to help people like this.”

While attending the University of South Carolina School of Law (where he earned his Juris Doctor degree), Christmas clerked for two plaintiffs’ personal injury practices. During this time, he was a research assistant to Professor John Montgomery, former Dean of the South Carolina School of Law, and worked with him and Professor David G. Owen, co-author of Prosser and Keeton on Torts, on their case book Products Liability & Safety (3rd ed.). After law school, he worked for another personal injury firm.

While he appreciated the trial experience he gained working there, in the end he wanted to call the shots and fight harder for clients and go to trial when it was necessary to secure the money they were entitled to. “Working for myself gave me a lot of autonomy,” he says, “and the ability to take on and try cases I know that most firms wouldn’t pursue. I remember a finger injury case that I took all the way to the State Supreme Court. The client needed surgery and I believed he was entitled to a fair settlement.”

Being a native South Carolinian who also went to law school there gave him insight into where he felt the best place was to settle and establish his practice. He found Charleston to be a very friendly, “collegial” place where fellow attorneys helped the upstarts Christmas and Howell establish their firm by giving them some of their overflow caseload. “I’ve worked in some other bars, and found that in Charleston, people got along well and look out for each other,” he says.

In the firm’s early days, when they were building a large clientele via ads in the phone book and referrals based on big verdicts, Christmas estimates that he tried 80 percent of his cases, which translates to a total of over 200 during the first 13 years of his practice. He stopped counting after 200. He recalls securing $500,000 in medical benefits for a client despite there being little permanent work related injury. “It’s all about doing the right thing,” he says. “I make no money from the medical benefit, but ultimately that’s the most important thing for the client.”

His current ratio of cases that go to trial vs. cases that do not is 50-50. He says that is the result of the governor’s unfortunate “war on the working class. Christmas says, “You can either deal with that reality or not deal with it, but back in the days when it made sense to do so, we took 80 percent of our cases to trial because we believed that was the best way to get the fairest amount of money from the insurance companies. “I do enjoy trials, and I have never made a decision to go to trial or not based on my own wants and needs,” he adds. “Everything has to be based on getting better value for the client. If the insurance company offers them 20 percent and I can get them 30-40, I will do everything I can to make that happen. Nothing is technically wrong with settlement where the medical benefits are not considered and cases are moved out quickly. But many times that’s just not the right decision.”

Christmas is proud that his business is based on 99 percent contingency cases and that he is not afraid to stick his neck out to find money in “crazy” places for his clients. He doesn’t base his decision to take on such cases on a gut feeling; he is tireless in his dedication to fully investigating the details surrounding a claim. Sometimes, he says, things don’t look so great on the surface but when he gets to the bottom and uncovers key details, he can uncover amazing hidden facts that can translate to a lot of money for his client.

“Some lawyers listen to the basic story and make a kneejerk decision based on what the potential they see on the surface,” he says. “But one case our firm ultimately resolved for $11 million, it was originally thought that there was a low amount of insurance policy limits available. However, after our firm’s significant investigation into the matter, it was determined that there was in fact an umbrella coverage that was worth $25 million dollars, and it was easy then to settle for eleven million. That’s just my nature. I grew up middle class and driven and I always have something to prove. This in turns allows me to help my client.

“Our job at Howell and Christmas is to provide financial relief to a devastated person or family so that the injured party can focus on his or her injury and not the financial aspect and recovery,” Christmas adds. “We don’t want them to worry about the world crashing around them, and it’s very gratifying to provide them with this kind of assurance and relief. It’s very much a David vs. Goliath situation. The insurance company has deep resources, and claimants we represent have none. We come in as their champion, get in there and against all odds, do everything we can do help them win and get them the benefits.

“Sometimes it’s hard not to get emotionally involved, but it is important for the clients’ sake to keep our objectivity so we can analyze the facts properly. But in the end, we are happy that we can do something incredible for the clients who put their faith in us. My law partner Ladson once was a defense lawyer representing the insurance companies. But no insurance company ever gave anyone a hug after a case was done!”