South Carolina Car Accident Settlement Calculator
Estimate a car accident settlement under South Carolina law. The calculator applies this jurisdiction's own comparative fault rule and damages ceilings, and every figure below is the one our verified data holds, with the statute behind it and the date we checked it.
What South Carolina law does to your claim
Three things in state law open a gap between two identical injuries in two different states: how long you have to file, what happens if you were partly at fault, and whether the state puts a ceiling on what a jury can award. Here is what we hold for this one.
South Carolina bars recovery if plaintiff is 51% or more at fault.
Nelson v. Concrete Supply Co., 399 S.E.2d 783 (S.C. 1991)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
S.C. Code Ann. § 15-32-530·Last reviewed 2026-07-30
None on record means our verified data holds no figure of this kind for this state. It is not a finding that no limit could apply to your claim.
South Carolina car insurance law: minimums, PIP and uninsured motorist coverage
What South Carolina's provisions say about the insurance behind a car accident claim, in their own words, with the copy read named under each.
South Carolina: Minimum liability coverage
“An automobile insurance policy may not be issued or delivered in this State to the owner of a motor vehicle or may not be issued or delivered by an insurer licensed in this State upon a motor vehicle then principally garaged or principally used in this State, unless it contains a provision insuring the persons defined as insured against loss from the liability imposed by law for damages arising out of the ownership, maintenance, or use of these motor vehicles within the United States or Canada, subject to limits exclusive of interest and costs, with respect to each motor vehicle, as follows: (1) twenty-five thousand dollars because of bodily injury to one person in any one accident and, subject to the limit for one person; (2) fifty thousand dollars because of bodily injury to two or more persons in any one accident; and (3) twenty-five thousand dollars because of injury to or destruction of property of others in any one accident.”
A minimum is a floor on what a policy must carry. It is not a limit on what a claim is worth, and it does not tell you what the at-fault driver carries.
South Carolina: No-fault, personal injury protection and the right to sue
“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. If an insurer sells no-fault insurance coverage which provides personal injury protection, medical payment coverage, or economic loss coverage, the coverage shall not be assigned or subrogated and is not subject to a setoff.”
South Carolina: Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage
“No automobile insurance policy or contract may be issued or delivered unless it contains a provision by endorsement or otherwise, herein referred to as the uninsured motorist provision, undertaking to pay the insured all sums which he is legally entitled to recover as damages from the owner or operator of an uninsured motor vehicle, within limits which may be no less than the requirements of Section 38-77-140. The uninsured motorist provision also must provide for no less than twenty-five thousand dollars' coverage for injury to or destruction of the property of the insured in any one accident but may provide an exclusion of the first two hundred dollars of the loss or damage.”
“Automobile insurance carriers shall offer, at the option of the insured, uninsured motorist coverage up to the limits of the insured's liability coverage in addition to the mandatory coverage prescribed by Section 38-77-150. Such carriers shall also offer, at the option of the insured, underinsured motorist coverage up to the limits of the insured liability coverage […]”
The provision continues past the end of this quote, and the rest is not quoted here.
South Carolina: Medical payments coverage
No medical payments coverage requirement was found in the provisions read for this page (S.C. Code §§ 38-77-140, 38-77-144, 38-77-150 and 38-77-160).
What partial fault costs you in South Carolina
The same claim, fracture with surgery, several months of recovery, run through the calculator above four times, with nothing changed but the share of fault assigned to the claimant. The numbers are the engine's output, not an editorial claim about what these cases are worth.
One case, run through the calculator above four times with only the claimant's share of fault changed, under South Carolina law. No coverage ceiling is applied, because we would be inventing the at-fault party's policy. These shares illustrate the rule; they are not an estimate of your own fault.
Every South Carolina deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the South Carolina periods in our verified data, with the statute behind each one. A deadline is the outside limit, never a target, and other rules can shorten it.
S.C. Code § 15-3-530(5)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculatorS.C. Code § 15-3-545·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculatorS.C. Code § 15-3-530(6)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the wrongful death calculatorS.C. Code § 42-15-40·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the workers compensation calculatorS.C. Code § 15-3-530(5)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the slip and fall calculatorSouth Carolina against the rest of the country
Every count below is read from our state-law data across all 51 jurisdictions, so it moves when the data does. What you will not find here is an average settlement figure: the only one we could compute is a model, and a model presented as a measurement is not a fact.
- 24 of the 51 jurisdictions we track apply modified comparative negligence with a 51% bar, and South Carolina is one of them.
- Its 3 years to file is longer than the 2 years that 25 jurisdictions use. Across the 51 jurisdictions the deadline for this case type runs from 1 year to 6 years.
- 7 of the 51 jurisdictions limit non-economic damages (pain and suffering) in our data and South Carolina is not among them, so an estimate here is not held down by a ceiling we hold.
Comparisons are drawn from the legal levers that actually move a case value, not from closed-case data, which we do not hold. See the full methodology