After a long, involved process featuring multiple hearings and amendments, the South Carolina legislature passed a tort reform bill in May. There’s some bad news for South Carolina residents in the new law, but there are also many issues that remain unresolved. That’s because the original bill was much more ambitious than the one that passed. But some of those proposals are likely to resurface.
What Did the Tort Reform and Liquor Liability Bill Do?
Adding Non-Parties to Verdict Forms
This change sounds a bit technical and may not seem important at first glance, but the impact on injured people in South Carolina could be significant. The effect of this change is that when a jury is asked to consider fault in an injury case, they may be presented with options that aren’t part of the case. Imagine, for example, that a motorist hits a pedestrian in the parking lot of a small local business. The pedestrian is seriously injured and sues the driver.
In the past, the jury would have been asked to apportion responsibility between the pedestrian and the driver who hit them. If the pedestrian was partly to blame, their damages may be reduced. Now, though, the jury could be asked to apportion blame among the driver, the pedestrian, the business owner and another driver in the parking lot who wasn’t involved in the accident. Those extra players won’t be part of the case–they won’t be there to defend themselves in court and they won’t have to pay their share of the damages. But, any blame assigned to them will reduce the injured person’s liability.
Non-Parties on Verdict Forms are Bad for Injury Victims and Targeted Non-Parties
Of course, a defendant like the driver who injured the pedestrian has a strong incentive to identify and include as many other possible responsible parties as possible. The injured person may file motions to exclude people and businesses that the defendant tries to include on the verdict form. This adds a procedural layer that further benefits the responsible party by creating a delay that may be used to pressure the injured person to settle the case for less than its worth.
Previously, the injured party had to prove that the defendant was negligent, that the negligence caused their damages, and the amount of their damages. Now, the injury victim may be called upon to do all that AND to defend each of the other entities listed on the verdict form to avoid reduction in the damages they can receive. Alternatively, they can add the other parties as defendants to avoid reduction in compensation. That puts the plaintiff and their attorney in a difficult situation, forced to choose between protecting the claim by adding parties they don’t really believe are liable or risking an incomplete verdict that may leave the injured person unable to cover medical bills and other losses.
In short, some injury cases will become much more complicated. Insurance companies have a new tool for both delaying claims and avoiding paying fair compensation. Individuals and businesses can be accused of negligence on the record without being included in the case and offered an opportunity to defend themselves. No one benefits except insurance companies.
Reducing Protections for Victims of Drunk Drivers and Other Liquor-Related Injuries
Liquor liability reform achieves its stated goal: to make operations cheaper for establishments that serve alcohol. Unfortunately, the new law achieves that goal by dramatically decreasing the compensation available to someone who is injured or has lost a family member because a bar or restaurant was negligent.
The changes include:
- Several opportunities for the establishment to lower their minimum insurance coverage requirement, in some cases dropping coverage from the standard $1 million minimum down to $300,000. And, unlike your automobile insurance coverage, that coverage minimum is aggregate for the year, not per event.
- A cap of 50% of total liability for the establishment, regardless of how egregious their behavior was and what proportion of blame a jury believes should be assigned to them.
In addition, of course, the negligent liquor establishment can take advantage of the new tool for defendants described above and attempt to throw additional non-parties into the mix to confuse the jury and reduce the compensation available to the injured party.
What Lies Ahead for South Carolina Tort Reform?
The changes the legislature squeaked in under the wire as the 2025 legislative session closed are bad–but the proposed legislation was much worse. Unfortunately, we don’t yet know whether the efforts will die down now, or whether the legislature will resume its press to gut protections for South Carolina residents and small business owners. Some of the proposals that didn’t make it through in 2025 include:
- Allowing insurance companies to exclude punitive damages coverage from uninsured motorist coverage
- Severely limiting a property owner’s ability to seek compensation for later-discovered construction defects they could not have been aware of earlier
- Altering bad faith protections for injury victims to allow insurance companies to delay claims for up to 10 months without consequences
- Imposing damage limits in more medical malpractice cases by eliminating exceptions that remove caps if the provider is grossly negligent, reckless, or acts willfully and wantonly
- Limits on claims for passengers of drunk drivers
It’s unclear which of these efforts may be revived or how zealously the legislature will push for them. We will continue to report new developments and explain what they could mean for you when the legislature reconvenes.
An Experienced Injury Lawyer is More Important Than Ever
The changes taking effect in January of 2026 will make recovering fair compensation more difficult for many South Carolina injury victims. The best way to manage those new challenges is to contact an experienced Charleston personal injury lawyer as soon as possible after your injury.