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Partly at Fault for a South Carolina Accident? You Can Still Recover.
South Carolina follows modified comparative negligence: you can recover compensation as long as your share of fault does not exceed 50 percent.
Your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault. At 51 percent, it disappears entirely.
At 30 percent fault on a $100,000 claim, you collect $70,000. At exactly 50 percent, you still collect half.
One point past that, nothing.
Fault percentages are not facts handed down from the sky. They are negotiated, argued, and won, and the insurer opens the bidding.
If an adjuster is telling you the crash was mostly your fault, get a second opinion before you accept their math. The review is free: (888) 713-6653.
Shared Fault in South Carolina: The Short Version
- You recover if your fault does not exceed 50 percent, reduced by your share
- At exactly 50/50, you still recover half; at 51 percent, you recover nothing
- The rule was adopted by the state Supreme Court in Nelson v. Concrete Supply Co. (1991)
- The 2025 tort reform rewrote how fault is divided among multiple defendants
- Defendants can now point at 'empty chair' tortfeasors who were never sued
- An adjuster's fault percentage is an opening bid, not a verdict
What South Carolina's Comparative Negligence Rule Says
South Carolina adopted modified comparative negligence by court decision rather than statute. In Nelson v. Concrete Supply Co. (1991), the state Supreme Court abandoned the old contributory negligence rule, which had barred any recovery for a plaintiff even slightly at fault, and replaced it with the modern standard: an injured person may recover if their negligence is not greater than the defendant's, with damages reduced in proportion to their share.
When more than one defendant contributed to the harm, your fault is weighed against their combined share. A pedestrian found 30 percent at fault against a driver at 45 and a bar at 25 still recovers, reduced by 30 percent.
The apportionment mechanics live in S.C. Code § 15-38-15, and the 2025 tort reform rewrote them in ways every injured South Carolinian should understand before talking to an adjuster.[1]
The Difference One Percentage Point Makes
The arithmetic is simple and brutal. Total damages are calculated first, then cut by your share of fault:
- 20 percent at fault on a $150,000 claim: you recover $120,000.
- 40 percent at fault: $90,000.
- 50 percent at fault: $75,000. South Carolina lets you recover at the line, not just under it.
- 51 percent at fault: zero. No reduced check, no partial recovery.
That 50/50 rule is worth noticing, because South Carolina is more forgiving here than its neighbors. Georgia cuts recovery off at 50 percent exactly, and North Carolina still bars a plaintiff who was 1 percent at fault. In South Carolina, a true even split still pays half the claim.
It also means the entire fight happens in a narrow band. An insurer that moves you from 30 percent to 50 percent has cut its payout by a third. Moving you one more point erases it. Every fault argument the defense makes is aimed at that arithmetic.
How the 2025 Tort Reform Changed Multi-Defendant Fault Fights
Act 42, effective for claims arising after January 1, 2026, made three structural changes to § 15-38-15:[2]
Defendants under 50 percent pay only their share. A defendant found less than 50 percent at fault owes only its own percentage of the damages. Only a defendant at 50 percent or more remains jointly liable for the whole award. If one at-fault party is broke or uninsured, the others no longer automatically cover the gap, which makes finding every defendant and every policy the core of case value.
The empty chair is back. Defendants can now ask the jury to assign fault to people and companies that were never sued, as long as they disclose those nonparties within 180 days. Expect the defense to blame the phantom driver, the absent contractor, anyone not in the courtroom, to shrink its own slice and push yours toward 51.
Settling parties stay on the form. A defendant who settled early still appears on the verdict form, which changes settlement strategy in cases with multiple defendants.
The same act removed the old rule that kept alcohol-related defendants fully liable regardless of their percentage, a change that matters in drunk driving cases and is covered in our page on South Carolina's dram shop and liquor liability law.
Where Inflated Fault Percentages Come From
No adjuster calls to tell you your share of fault went down. The pressure runs one direction, through predictable tactics:
The recorded statement trap
Days after the crash, a friendly adjuster asks you to describe what happened on a recording. Every hedge ("I might have been going a little fast") becomes a fault argument months later. South Carolina law does not require you to give the other side's insurer a recorded statement.
The percentage that came from nowhere
First offers routinely bake in a fault split the carrier assigned without evidence. A number without an investigation behind it is a negotiating position. It deserves a counter, not a signature.
The nonparty shell game
With the empty chair reinstated, defendants have a new lever: assign blame to someone who is not there to dispute it. The counter is naming every genuinely responsible party early, backed by the crash report, vehicle data, and scene evidence, so the jury divides fault among real defendants instead of ghosts.
How other states handle these same fights is mapped in our state-by-state guide to comparative negligence laws, and the broader mechanics are covered in recovering compensation when you were partially at fault.