House Oks Move To Help Bars, Restaurants Cut Insurance Costs As Sc Debates Tort Reform

As South Carolina bars and restaurants say rising costs of liability insurance makes it difficult to stay in business, the state House on Thursday took aim to reduce those expenses through a liquor liability reform.

Pushing the liquor liability legislation comes as the Senate debates a broader tort reform bill, which has support from Gov. Henry McMaster.

“This is a real problem that needs to be addressed,” said state Rep. Jay Jordan, R-Florence.

Places that serve alcohol are required to have at least $1 million in liability insurance. The $1 million requirement was meant to help people who were seriously injured but didn’t have help for recovery, Jordan said.

That requirement is among the reasons insurance companies have raised premiums or even have left the state, proponents of the bill said.

Under the bill passed unanimously by the House on Thursday, bars and restaurants can see that $1 million reduced if they take certain actions, including closing earlier than midnight, having employees go through alcohol serving training courses, having less than 40% of their sales come from alcohol or being a nonprofit holding a special event.

Bars and restaurants, however, will be required to have at least $250,000 in liability insurance. The legislation also increases penalties for a motorist caught driving under the influence.

“If you’re a good actor and you’re not going to be engaged in activities later at night, and you require safe serve training, ... it lowers the required premiums that you have,” House Judiciary Chairman Weston Newton told reporters after the debate.

“What we did is presented a real solution to a real problem, so that the bars and restaurants and the hard working folks in South Carolina that support our tourism industry aren’t held hostage anymore to some effort to do something different,” Newton, R-Beaufort, said.

The House version also removes the joint and several liability for bars and restaurants.

A similar bill passed the House last year 102-2. The bill did not move in the Senate.

“We want to make South Carolina a place that protects businesses, but also make sure that we protect victims,” House Speaker Murrell Smith said.

The House vote came a day after proponents and opponents of the Senate bill packed the State House lobby for a rally over the ongoing debate of tort reform.

“Thank you to the House for taking such quick action following yesterday’s press conference. This is a positive first step towards a commonsense solution,” McMaster posted on X. “The Senate also appears to be making similar progress today.”

As the House passed its liquor liability reform, the Senate spent its third day debating a larger tort reform bill. A vote to kill an amendment that opponents said would gut the legislation failed giving an indication that a majority of senators are yet on board.

Smith said it’s too early to pass judgment on what the Senate might end up passing, if anything.

“Obviously, we have discussed that with the Senate, and there are a lot of things that we agree upon in that bill, and then things that some people don’t agree upon, and we’ll figure all that out,” Smith said. “But to comment on that bill right now. We need to let them have their debate, and they will send it over here, and then we’ll have our debate and we’ll start looking at that bill.”

Tort reform hits speed bump in the Senate

The Senate’s attempts to pass comprehensive tort reform, born largely out of the liquor liability debate, might be dead in the water.

Just minutes after the House vote, Sen. Stephen Goldfinch, R-Georgetown, paused answering questions on his proposed amendment, to take out his phone, and announced that the House had just passed a dram shop bill.

The Senate’s attempt to reform the state’s system of assigning liability in court cases has been spearheaded by Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield. But the contentious bill has split the Senate and even drawn criticism from president Donald Trump’s son, Don Jr.

While much of the public interest has centered on bars and restaurants being driven out of business due to soaring insurance rates, supporters of tort reform say that the issue in South Carolina is far larger.

In particular, Massey and his supporters have said that they are aiming to fix features of the state’s civil trial system that require juries to apportion all of the damages to the defendant in a case even if they believe that other parties, who were not sued, should bear more responsibility.

The Senate bill would allow defendants to add other parties to the jury form to allocate some of the liability. The goal, Massey and supporters say, is to protect businesses bearing the brunt of the monetary costs of lawsuits even when they are not fully to blame.

Goldfinch warned that it could lead to big insurers attempting to shift the blame to foreign companies or other parties that were immune from litigation.

“That’s pulling the wool over the jury’s eyes,” Goldfinch said.

Goldfinch said that his “compromise” amendment, the first one proposed so far, would establish process and restrictions on who could be additional parties. In particular, it would prevent defendants, particularly insurance companies, from dragging in other parties at the last minute.

But Massey said Goldfinch’s amendment “gutted” the bill by essentially preventing defendants from adding most other parties that might be liable. Among those were parties that had been charged with a crime.

“This is a compromise among trial lawyers for trial lawyers,” Massey said.

A motion to stop Goldfinch’s amendment failed, leading Massey to suggest that the entire bill was dead in the water before calling for the Senate to adjourn.

“It’s done, it’s over. There will be businesses closed because of this,” Massey said.

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