Car insurance claims in South Carolina

South Carolina decides motor-vehicle claims by fault, and it is one of the few states that says so in words rather than leaving it to inference. Section 38-77-144 is titled «Personal injury protection (PIP) coverage not mandated» and reads: «There is no personal injury protection (PIP) coverage mandated under the automobile insurance laws of this State. Any reference to personal injury protection in Title 38 or 56 or elsewhere is deleted.» What the owner of a registered vehicle must instead maintain, under §§ 56-10-10 and 56-10-20, is a policy carrying at least the coverages of § 38-77-140 — cover «against loss from the liability imposed by law». Chapter 77’s declaration of purpose does mention benefits «without regard to fault», but the operative word there is offered, not required, and § 38-77-144 closes the question. The share of that liability is set by the courts rather than by statute. Quoting Nelson v. Concrete Supply Co. with its page, the Court of Appeals held in 2021: «For all causes of action arising on or after July 1, 1991, a plaintiff in a negligence action may recover damages if his or her negligence is not greater than that of the defendant. The amount of the plaintiff’s recovery shall be reduced in proportion to the amount of his or her negligence.» «Not greater than» is the whole rule: a driver exactly half to blame recovers half, and a driver fifty-one percent to blame recovers nothing. Do not read § 15-38-15 as the source of that bar — it governs joint and several liability among defendants, and its own subsection (C)(2) sends the plaintiff’s share back to «applicable rules concerning comparative negligence», which is Nelson.

One statutory change is coming and one widely cited bill never arrived. Section 15-38-15 was rewritten by 2025 Act No. 42, and the Code compilation currently prints both versions side by side, the new one marked «Section effective January 1, 2026». The act’s own section 11 makes it prospective: it «applies only to causes of action or claims arising or accruing after January 1, 2026, and applies to all policies issued after that date.» From that date fault may be allocated to tortfeasors who are not defendants, provided they are disclosed «within one hundred eighty days of the commencement of the action or at a later time for good cause shown», and a defendant whose conduct was wilful, wanton, reckless or intentional is jointly and severally liable for the whole. None of that changes the plaintiff’s own fifty-one percent bar. Separately, S. 244 — the Senate bill titled «Tort Reform» that is often described as the 2025 reform — is not law: its own status page records it as «Currently residing in the House Committee on Judiciary», and the scheme it proposed, splitting economic from noneconomic damages, never entered the Code, so no figure from it appears here. The court deadlines, meanwhile, are unusually uniform. Section 15-3-530 gives three years for «an action for assault, battery, or any injury to the person or rights of another», three years for «an action for taking, detaining, or injuring any goods or chattels», and three years for «an action upon a contract, obligation, or liability, express or implied». Injury runs from discovery, because § 15-3-535 requires such actions to be brought «within three years after the person knew or by the exercise of reasonable diligence should have known that he had a cause of action». Suing your own insurer sits in the same three-year contract paragraph, so it buys no extra time — and note that § 15-3-530(8), the paragraph that overrides a policy’s own shortened suit clause «any clause, condition, or limitation contained in the policy to the contrary notwithstanding», is written for policies «either fire or life». Read the suit-limitation clause in your motor policy, because on this text nothing disapplies it; whether any other provision of Title 38 sets a floor on one has not yet been verified against a primary text and is not stated here, though chapters 38-59, 38-61, 38-63 and 38-77 were read in full and contain none.

There is no insurer timetable in South Carolina, and that is the accurate answer rather than a gap, which is why this page states no acknowledgement, decision or payment deadline. Section 38-59-20 defines improper claim practices — among them «failing to acknowledge with reasonable promptness pertinent communications with respect to claims arising under its policies, including third-party claims arising under liability insurance policies» and «not attempting in good faith to effect prompt, fair, and equitable settlement of claims … in which liability has become reasonably clear» — but it fixes no number of days, and it reaches conduct only where it is «committed without just cause and performed with such frequency as to indicate a general business practice». One feature is better than most states’: the section says «including third-party claims arising under liability insurance policies» four separate times, so the duties reach the other driver’s claimant and not only the insured. Chapter 69 of the Code of Regulations, read end to end and current through State Register Volume 50, Issue 3, effective 27 March 2026, contains no unfair-claim-settlement-practices regulation at all: the phrase «unfair claim» appears nowhere in it, and neither does «total loss». What does exist is worth knowing. Section 38-59-10 gives the insurer twenty days after notice of loss to furnish blank proof-of-loss forms, failing which the claimant «is considered to have complied with the requirements of the policy as to proof of loss» — a forms duty and not an acknowledgement duty, which is why it is not published as one. Section 38-77-330 provides that where liability and amount are both undisputed, a property-damage payment «is immediately due and owing and must be paid promptly», with eight percent interest per annum if the director finds the payment «was unnecessarily delayed» — and that such a payment may not be delayed or denied because a bodily-injury claim is pending. Section 38-59-40 allows reasonable attorney’s fees, capped at one third of the judgment, where an insurer refuses to pay within ninety days of the policyholder’s demand and the trial judge finds the refusal was without reasonable cause or in bad faith; that ninety days is the waiting period the policyholder must let run, not a deadline the insurer owes. And under § 38-77-250 an insurer has thirty days to answer a claimant’s attorney’s sworn written request, sent by certified mail or statutory overnight delivery with the incident report attached, with a statement under oath of the insurer, the insureds and the limits. One trap: chapter 38-59 also contains twenty- and forty-business-day payment clocks, but § 38-59-210 defines «insurer» there as an entity providing health insurance coverage, so those numbers have nothing to do with a car and appear nowhere on this page.

On cover, reporting and repairs, South Carolina has some of the most claimant-friendly provisions in this dataset and one settled disappointment. A policy may not be issued or delivered unless it carries at least $25,000 for bodily injury to one person, $50,000 for two or more, and $25,000 for property damage — figures that have applied to policies issued or renewed on or after 1 January 2007 and that no 2025 or 2026 act has raised. Uninsured motorist coverage is genuinely compulsory: no policy may be issued without it, at limits no lower than those minimums, and it must include «no less than twenty-five thousand dollars’ coverage for injury to or destruction of the property of the insured», though the first $200 may be excluded. Top-up uninsured coverage and underinsured coverage are elective, but silence protects you — under § 38-77-350(E), «if the insured fails or refuses to return an executed offer form within thirty days to the insurer, the insurer shall add on uninsured motorist and underinsured motorist coverages with the same policy limits as the insured’s liability limits.» A signed and completed offer form, by contrast, raises a conclusive presumption of informed selection. A vehicle counts as uninsured not only where there is no policy but where the insurer «successfully denies coverage», where it is insolvent or cannot respond to a judgment, and where the driver is simply unknown; the underinsured test is measured against the insured’s damages. Since 20 May 2024 a hit-and-run claim can be supported by a recording of the accident as well as by physical contact or an independent witness’s affidavit, and the police-report condition is «within a reasonable time, under all the circumstances» rather than a fixed number of hours. The old option of paying a fee to register as an uninsured motorist was abolished with effect from 1 July 2024, and the Department of Motor Vehicles was directed to ensure nobody remained so registered — so although § 38-77-150(C) still conditions subrogation on that fee having been paid, the condition can no longer be satisfied. Reporting splits by who investigated: injury or death must be reported «immediately by the quickest means of communication», while the written fifteen-day report to the Department of Motor Vehicles is owed by the driver or owner only where damage reaches «one thousand dollars or more which was not investigated by a law enforcement officer» — where an officer did investigate, the report is his, within twenty-four hours of completing it. Failing to file the driver’s report properly verified as to liability insurance is «prima facie evidence that the vehicle was uninsured», and no such report is evidence of negligence or due care in a damages action. For property damage there is a summary statutory arbitration with no formal pleading: three attorney-arbitrators or one by agreement, a ten-dollar filing fee, thirty days for the defendant to respond on pain of default, a hearing within sixty days of filing, an award covering «actual damages, loss of use, depreciation, and any other property damages which are the direct and proximate result of the accident», and twenty days to appeal to a trial de novo. On diminished value the first-party answer is settled and negative: in Schulmeyer v. State Farm the Supreme Court held that «there is no concept of value in the ordinary meaning of these words» — repair and replace — so a properly repaired car earns no extra payment for lost market value under that policy language, though the holding is an interpretation of that policy’s wording rather than a rule of law about all policies, and the court expressly declined to follow the Georgia route. The third-party picture is different, because the arbitration statute lists depreciation among the heads to be awarded; that is why this page records diminished value as limited rather than as no. Whether a South Carolina appellate decision treats that statutory «depreciation», or the general tort measure of damages, as including inherent diminished value in a claim against the at-fault driver has not yet been verified against a primary text and is not stated here.