Senate debate on broad tort-and-insurance bill lays out competing visions on liability, nonparty verdicts and insurer duties

A long debate in the South Carolina Senate on March 5 focused on a complex bill that would change civil-liability rules, how juries may record fault for parties not named in a case, insurer bad-faith standards, dram-shop liability and several construction and medical-malpractice provisions.

Supporters, led in floor remarks by the senator from Edgefield, argued the measures are intended to align financial responsibility with who actually caused injuries and to reduce insurance costs that they say are harming businesses and some local industries. “I should be responsible for the damage that I cause. I should not be responsible for the damage that someone else causes,” the senator from Edgefield told colleagues during the two-day discussion.

Opponents warned the changes would shift losses onto injured people or third parties and described the proposal as a far broader rewrite of tort law than the chamber has previously considered. The senator from Williamsburg and others pressed for protections for plaintiffs, and repeatedly raised hypotheticals in which an injured person could end up with a smaller recovery if nonparty fault is placed on entities that are effectively outside the civil-claims process.

What the bill would do - End or sharply limit joint-and-several liability for many civil claims so each defendant generally pays only its share of fault, rather than allowing a plaintiff to collect the entire judgment from any single at-fault defendant. - Allow juries to record fault for “nonparty” tortfeasors (entities or people not joined as defendants) on a verdict form, even when those…