South Carolina Two-Tier Damages Cap Upheld

South Carolina’s two-tier statutory cap on damages is constitutional, the state Supreme Court has ruled.

In the same ruling, however, the court found that two separate governmental entities’ negligent acts, which resulted in injuries to the plaintiffs, constituted two occurrences, not just one, under the state’s Tort Claims Act.

Plaintiffs Larry Lee and Jeannie Boiter were injured when their motorcycle collided with a car in an intersection where the red light signal’s light bulbs had burned out earlier that day. The Boiters suffered significant injuries, requiring lengthy hospital stays and incurring $888,756 in medical bills and $203,897 in lost wages. They settled with the other driver for her policy limits of $50,000.

The Boiters then sued the South Carolina Department of Transportation and South Carolina Department of Public Safety, alleging negligence in their failure to prevent the accident. They alleged SCDOT failed to implement a policy to replace bulbs in traffic signals before they burn out and that a citizen’s call one hour and 27 minutes prior to the accident reporting the outage should have resulted in SCDPS sending a trooper to the scene to direct traffic.

The negligence of both agencies was undisputed in the appeal to the Supreme Court. At trial, the jury found in favor of the Boiters and awarded each of them a total of $1.875 million.

South Carolina has a two-tier statutory cap on damages based on who allegedly committed the act. For state-employed physicians and dentists, the cap is $1.2 million per person and per occurrence. For all other state entities, the cap is $300,000 per person and $600,000 per occurrence.

The state agencies sought to reduce the verdict amount in accordance with the Tort Claims Act. In response, the Boiters challenged the constitutionality of the two-tier cap in that law on equal protection grounds. They also asserted that the state agencies’ negligence constituted two separate occurrences under the tort act.

The Supreme Court ruled that the caps pass a rational basis test, saying the policy justifications of the General Assembly were a sufficient basis.

However, the high court did agree with the Boiters that there were two separate entities that committed two separate and independent acts of negligence. Accordingly, each act of negligence was a separate occurrence, which entitled the Boiters to a combined verdict of $1.2 million.

Topics South Carolina