South Carolina Lawsuit Reform Battle: State Of Play

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Supporters of comprehensive lawsuit reform in South Carolina suffered a decisive defeat this week when a critical test vote in the State Senate on a far-ranging reform bill went against them.

The tally – a resounding rebuke of the bill’s lead sponsor, S.C. Senate majority leader Shane Massey – led many political observers to opine that the Palmetto State’s wealthy and powerful trial lawyer lobby had won the day on this issue. Certainly, Massey’s bill to curtail their influence – S. 244 – is dead on arrival as originally envisioned.

That development in and of itself caused trial lawyers – whose perpetual, for-profit exploitation of the Palmetto State’s anti-competitive tort laws is killing small business development and job creation in South Carolina – to declare victory over Massey.

On the surface, their win – achieved by all manner of deceptive and unsavory tactics – would appear to be complete.

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Only nineteen (19) senators – seventeen (17) Republicans and two Democrats – supported Massey on the test vote, which was held on Thursday afternoon (March 6, 2025). Conversely, twenty-five (25) senators opposed him – including fourteen (14) Republicans. Two GOP senators – Chip Campsen and Shane Martin – were absent from the chamber and did not vote.

Sound familiar? It should…

On yet another issue absolutely vital to South Carolina’s competitiveness, the so-called GOP “supermajority” is (for the moment, anyway) hopelessly splintered – with numerous left-of-center “Republicans” siding with Democrats to create an all-too familiar (and familiarly self-serving) uniparty governing majority.

Here’s a look at how the chips fell…

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Based on that tally, Massey is five votes shy of a majority – meaning his all-encompassing legislation will not be clearing the chamber anytime soon. And, in fairness, even if it had cleared the chamber, powerful S.C. speaker Murrell Smith – a trial lawyer himself – stands ready to kill the bill in his chamber, which is led by numerous fellow lawyer-legislators raking in huge profits from the current system.

While trial lawyers gleefully declared the bill dead (and Massey supporters concurred in their assessment), the broader battle for substantive lawsuit reform remains very much alive.

How is that possible? Two key reasons…

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First, many of the GOP senators who voted against Massey’s bill still favor wide-ranging lawsuit reform – just not his version of it. Several senators also made it abundantly clear they would have backed an amended version of S. 244 had Massey been willing to negotiate – and are still willing to vote for such a bill. In fact, powerful Senate finance chairman Harvey Peeler is said to have joined the anti-Massey contingent on the test vote because he wanted to send his party’s floor leader a message that it was time for him to come to the table.

Certainly left-of-center “Republicans” like Stephen Goldfinch and “former” Democrat Luke Rankin were never going to be on board with real reform – nor are the handful of GOP senators whose allegiance to the trial lawyer lobby appears to have been purchased in recent months.

Those votes are gone…

All reformers need, though, are 26 votes – a majority of twenty-four (24) senators to pass a bill plus two additional votes to ensure any attempt to filibuster the legislation is defeated.

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How is that so hard to achieve those numbers in a chamber with thirty-three ostensibly “conservative” Republicans? Not to mention a pair of Democrats who appear to have seen the light on this issue?

Second (and this is the most important reason), this week’s fiasco has sparked a long overdue realization within South Carolina’s business community – both at the corporate and small business level – that the trial lawyer lobby is not merely their political rival, but their mortal enemy.

They are not dealing with a sickness which can be treated – they are confronting a cancer which must be cut out.

Supporters of S. 244 were outspent and outflanked. They were beaten (badly) on messaging, strategy and lobbying. They also entered the arena thinking they were dealing with honest brokers, only to discover after it was too late that they were negotiating with serial liars as well as politicians whose principles had already been purchased.

Is it a costly lesson to learn? Absolutely... but the fact it appears to have finally been learned is significant.

Stay tuned… this fight is far from over. Indeed, if what we have heard over the last eighteen hours is true, it has only just begun.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.

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