Deal struck to help SC bars, restaurants cope with rising liquor liability costs
A compromise to address liquor liability concerns to help bars and restaurants cope with rising insurance costs has been reached.
The House approved the deal Tuesday. The Senate followed suit on Wednesday evening which sends the bill to the governor.
The deal includes moves to address liquor liability in South Carolina and addresses concerns around joint and several liability.
Rising liability insurance costs have led to some bars and restaurants to close.
“The legislation dramatically changes joint and several liability in South Carolina,” said House Judiciary Chairman Weston Newton, R-Beaufort, said on the House floor. “It essentially eliminates joint and several liability, not just in the liquor context, which we did in our liquor liability bill, but it also eliminates it except in those circumstances of a willful, wanton, reckless, intentional and/or the illegal or illicit use, sale or possession of drugs.”
The legislation also allows bars and restaurants to lower the amount of liability insurance they have to carry down from the required $1 million.
Under the compromise approved by the House, 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, and using a digital identification scanner if serving alcohol between midnight and 4 a.m.
The law also would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026 to give insurance companies time adjust policies.
“I think we’re going to see instant reductions in some premiums right off the bat. And so it should give them what they’re asking for and what they’ve been asking for for the past two years,” said state Sen. Michael Johnson, R-York.
At all times, a liquor license holder will need to have at least $300,000 in liability insurance.
As part of the joint and several changes, all the people who contributed to a plaintiff’s injuries will be on a verdict form in lawsuits instead of a plaintiff only suing a person who only has partial responsibility, but has the deepest pocket.
“The reality is that we have been leaving the person most culpable for the injury off the verdict form for years now, and the goal is to rebalance this and let a bar who has really no liability in all of this not end up being punished for something they didn’t do,” Johnson said.
The idea is to make sure a person only pays for the proportion of the injuries and damages they caused, not for what other people caused, advocates said.
The deal wasn’t the full tort reform package the Senate agreed upon earlier this year, which occurred after a four-week debate on the floor, and weeks of discussion in committee.
But negotiations among Newton, House Speaker Murrell Smith, Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey were aimed at coming up with a path forward before lawmakers ended this year’s work on Thursday.
Massey said the talks that took place into late into evening last week and over the weekend got intense.
“I have nothing but good words for the speaker and Chairman Newton. They negotiated in good faith, even when they got mad at me and and wanted me to do stuff that I wasn’t willing to do, and we had good conversations,” Massey said.
House members, however, agreed to take up the other portions of the tort reform legislation next year.
This story was originally published May 7, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
