|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
A significantly eroded version of lawsuit reform cleared the South Carolina Senate this week – with numerous left-of-center lawyer-legislators joining reform advocates in supporting the watered-down tort bill.
Best case scenario? The S.C. Senate – which has 33 “Republican” votes – just missed a golden opportunity to fix the Palmetto State’s badly broken liability laws and enhance our lagging competitiveness. Worst case scenario? They made the problem worse… and in the process made South Carolina less competitive.
A heavily amended version of S. 244 – the lawsuit reform bill championed by Senate majority leader Shane Massey – cleared the so-called “Republican” chamber by 35–7 margin. Every GOP senator present and voting supported the bill – including numerous lawyer-legislators who consistently carried water for the Palmetto State’s über-liberal trial lawyer lobby over the contentious, months-long debate.
Their support of the final legislation was not a good sign for those who had hoped to make South Carolina’s courts fairer and its economy more competitive… nor, for that matter, was the contented silence emanating from the wealthy trial lawyer lobby following the bill’s passage.
“Massey got worked,” a source tracking the debate told FITSNews. “Don’t let anyone spin this. The trial lawyers embarrassed him.”
According to our sources, Massey ceded much of the backroom negotiating on the bill to S.C. senator Michael Johnson – who cobbled together a compromise many insist is actually a step in the wrong direction from the economically debilitating status quo.
***
***
Will the ostensibly GOP-controlled House of Representatives do anything to improve the bill as it moves across the lobby?
Absolutely not… nor will “Republican” governor Henry McMaster lift a finger on the issue.
If anything, the House – which is controlled by lawyer-legislators – will water this bill down even further. But if they decline to do so, that would be further evidence of the extent to which trial lawyers won this high-stakes battle of competing interests.
According to a summary of the bill published by the S.C. Coalition for Lawsuit Reform, the legislation which cleared the Senate “modified” the Palmetto State’s controversial joint and several liability laws – i.e. the sections of the Palmetto State’s code of laws which deal with assigning blame and liability in the aftermath of accidents.
Is the modification helpful, though? Not really…
While the bill does require damages to be apportioned among plaintiffs, defendants and non-parties to legal claims (including parties which settle their cases in connection with the accidents), each defendant remains “severally liable for non-economic damages.”
In other words, they would still be subject to paying up to half of the total economic damages (medical bills, lost wages) connected to the incident – and 100 percent of non-economic damages (pain and suffering, punitive damages, etc.).
***
Ironically, senators wound up codifying a 2017 case – Smith v. Tiffany (.pdf) – they originally intended to fix. As a result, what was previously a court’s interpretation of legislative intent regarding South Carolina’s inherently unfair system is well on its way to becoming the undisputed law of the state.
“(Reformers) were tricked on joint and several,” one source tracking the debate told us. “It is actually now worse than the status quo. The trial lawyers used words like ‘defendant’ on joint and several to get cute and codify the case that started this whole thing. If a bar is one percent at fault, now they are still subject to (a) 50% cap of economic damages but worse 100% on the hook for non-economic damages.”
The bill did reduce the total amount of liquor liability insurance establishments are required to carry from $1 million to $500,000, but in the process imposed costly new ID scanning obligations on “late night” establishments.
As for automobile insurance policies, minimum coverage requirements doubled – with providers now required to write policies which pay out damages of $50,000 for bodily injury to one person, $100,000 for bodily injury to two or more people and $50,000 for destruction of property. In other words, automobile insurance costs in the Palmetto State are about to skyrocket.
Taxpayers will also bear the brunt of higher costs related to negligence by government entities – with the “compromise” bill containing dramatic increases in monetary damages that can be awarded in cases brought against “agencies or political subdivisions” of the state.
Medical malpractice caps were also raised, which will further drive up health insurance costs – and further enrich wealthy trial lawyers.
Sadly, senators hoping to change the system realized early on they did not have the votes to do so. As previously reported, so-called “Republicans” Tom Fernandez, Jason Elliott, Billy Garrett, Mike Gambrell, Stephen Goldfinch, Carlisle Kennedy, Josh Kimbrell, Matt Leber, Luke Rankin and Everett Stubbs consistently voted with Democrats on key tallies.
Fernandez, Elliott, Garrett, Goldfinch, Kennedy, Rankin and Stubbs are all trial lawyers, incidentally.
***
RELATED | DOGE SC ENTERS LAWSUIT REFORM BATTLE
***
South Carolina’s tort climate has been the subject of significant debate ever since a high-profile case tied to the ‘Murdaugh Murders’ crime and corruption saga exposed the fundamental unfairness of the Palmetto State’s current law. Ironically, that case also exposed the corruption of the plaintiffs’ lawyer lobby – which was briefly led by convicted killer Alex Murdaugh.
With such sinister individuals aligned with the status quo, how was reform not inevitable?
Supporters of Massey’s bill blamed the sheer number of trial lawyers in the legislature for the defeat of comprehensive lawsuit reform.
“The votes weren’t there,” one reform backer told us.
They also pointed to the massive saddlebags of cash the trial lawyer lobby dumped on the legislature in campaign contributions, advertisements and, according to some, outright bribes.
“The good guys got outspent by an order of magnitude,” the reform supporter noted. “Given how much money is on the table, you’ll never see real or form without sustained gubernatorial leadership.”
Such leadership has clearly been lacking under McMaster…
***
***
Fixing South Carolina’s costly tort climate is a matter of life and death for thousands of businesses – large and small – across the Palmetto State. Leaders in the S.C. General Assembly had a chance to fix it this year. Unfortunately, as is the case with so many issues they take up, they failed miserably.
In fact, in all likelihood they made it much worse…
FITSNews has consistently editorialized in favor of long-overdue lawsuit reform in South Carolina.
“Trial lawyers are killing competitiveness – and jobs – in South Carolina,” I noted back in December.
Recent studies have shown South Carolina’s notoriously litigious tort climate imposes a weighty “tort tax” – or “lawsuit tax” – on Palmetto families which totals anywhere from $3,200 to $3,600 annually, per family.
Regular members of our audience are also intimately aware of the pernicious influence lawyer-legislators wield over the state’s supposedly “independent” judiciary – and the limited success reformers have had in fixing this rigged system. Our audience also knows the extent to which ostensibly “Republican” lawmakers have installed far left Democrats to key positions within the judiciary – including former S.C. chief justices Jean Toal and Donald Beatty.
Count on us to continue tracking developments in this ongoing debate as we seek to hold all those involved accountable for their actions… or their failure to act.
***
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.
***
WANNA SOUND OFF?
Got something you’d like to say in response to one of our articles? Or an issue you’d like to address proactively? We have an open microphone policy! Submit your letter to the editor (or guest column) via email HERE. Got a tip for a story? CLICK HERE. Got a technical question or a glitch to report? CLICK HERE.
2 comments
As usual the SC legislature passes a bill in which they ultimately created the problem to begin with. So they create another bill to fix said problem that ultimately will work against the citizens and taxpayers of the state. Did I miss anything.
I am surprised this hasn’t been challenged all the way to the Supreme Court already before the “reform”. It is a gross abuse of the legal system. If it were truly about the rights of the Plaintiff they would have added a cap to attorney fees on contingency cases.