South Carolina Bill S 244: “Insurance Welfare Act”

S 244: 2025 “Insurance Welfare Act” Section Summary

SECTION 1: Several Liability / Non-Parties on Verdict Form

• Currently, the South Carolina Contribution Among Tortfeasors Act limits a party’s liability based on that party’s own percentage of fault. It is false to say that a business is 100% liable when it is only 1% a fault.
• In 99.9% of cases, apportionment of fault – not pure joint and several liability – is already the law. To say otherwise is an attempt to fool lawmakers and the public. Former Republican Governor Mark Sanford signed our current system into law in 2005.
• The only time defendants who are 1% at fault are on the hook for 100% of the verdict is when criminal, quasi-criminal, reckless, and objectively dangerous conduct is involved.
• Under current law, Plaintiffs who are 50.1% at fault or more get zero, no matter how bad the damages.
• Non-Parties on the verdict form leads to more litigation. The answer to too many lawsuits and litigation is not more lawsuits and litigation.
• Absent “at-fault parties,” including small business owners, farmers, and construction companies will have no opportunity to defend themselves, present evidence, or cross-examine witnesses. It is trial by ambush against innocent people and businesses, causing public embarrassment, judgments, and increased insurance premiums.
• To echo what President Trump said recently in North Carolina, we don’t need more reasons to allow insurance companies to deny claims.

SECTION 2: Dram Shop Liability

• Loopholes and technicalities created by this bill protect lawbreaking bars, prevent accountability, and make enforcement difficult – just like our current state of DUI law and enforcement.
• Removes civil liability for bars that serve teenagers so long as the bar only serves the teenager a few drinks, ignoring the reality that once a teenager starts drinking any alcohol at a bar, they are likely to put themselves and other people at risk.

SECTION 3: Alcohol Server Training
• A step in the right direction, but the devil is in the details.

SECTION 4: Captive Insurance Companies/Liquor Liability
• Insurance companies would be permitted to issue eroding “ghost” policies that reduce coverage, leave small business policyholders unprotected, and disadvantage victims.

SECTION 5: Liquor Liability Insurance
• Willfully omits any requirement on multi-billion-dollar insurance companies to charge fair, transparent premiums on responsible bars and restaurants.

SECTION 6: Construction Defects/Statute of Repose
• The bill severely threatens the personal safety and financial security of South Carolina homeowners’ by lowering the already minimal building standards.
• Innocent South Carolina property owners should not have to shoulder the burden of contractors’ unsafe work.
• By their very nature, latent defects are not easily identified – especially by average citizens – the same citizens who would be harmed by this dangerous legislation.

SECTION 7: Seatbelt Admissibility
• In a nationwide study of car insurance premiums, there is no correlation between seatbelt laws and what policyholders pay. The only effect this bill will have is to congest our courts, prolong litigation, and have insurance companies pass their defense bill on to taxpayers.
• Less than 20 states allow seatbelt nonuse to be admitted, including Oregon, California, and New York. We don’t want to be them.

SECTION 9 & 10: Uninsured Motorist/Underinsured Motorist – Punitive Damages
• Most drunk drivers, illegal immigrants, and criminals are uninsured or underinsured. It is critical we require insurance companies to provide full UM / UIM coverage to our citizens without fine print insurance exclusions.
• This section inflicts devastating financial harm upon victims of drunk, illegal, and other reckless drivers by allowing insurance companies to rob them of their ability to protect themselves with coverage for punitive damages.

SECTION 11: “Occurrence” Definition/Medical Malpractice
• The real victims of this new definition are the insureds, i.e. hospital systems, doctors, and healthcare professionals, that would be exposed to verdicts that exceed their occurrence limits. This legislation does nothing to deter litigation, but instead encourages more of it.
• If the legislature increased caps and non-economic damage caps, there would be less interest in “occurrence-busting.” $300,000 in 1997 is equal to nearly $600,000 in 2025.

SECTION 12: Medical Malpractice Non-Economic Damages Cap
• S 244 as written literally requires that the medical provider be guilty of murder, attempted murder, or criminal battery to avoid the non-economic cap.
• South Carolina’s lack of mandatory malpractice insurance requirements for physicians creates significant risk for patients, as they may have no recourse if harmed by an uninsured provider. Adding more liability protections while maintaining this insurance gap would further stack the system against injured patients, especially the elderly, homemakers, children, and the disabled.

SECTION 13: Tyger River Doctrine – Insurance Companies & Bad Faith
• This section abolishes the precedent set forth by our conservative Supreme Court in 1933 and re-affirmed in our jurisprudence for the last 100 years. Tyger River is the law for good reason. It is the only way you can make an insurance company do the right thing and protect the policyholder.
• Under the current law, it is extremely difficult to sue an insurance company for bad faith.
• Many citizens and small businesses cannot afford to wait 90 days before an insurance company has any concern about responding to or paying a legitimate claim.
• Passage of S 244 as written will cause a tidal wave of lawsuits because insurance companies will be emboldened to deny legitimate claims and delay justice.