In 1986, the South Carolina Tort Claims Act was passed by our State Legislature. At that time, it provided certain rights to people who were injured by employees of state, county or city governmental agencies to bring legal action when they were injured by the negligence or gross negligence of these governmental agencies or their employees. The law placed many restrictions on when these suits could be brought and the requirements for proof. More importantly, the law placed severe limitations on the amount an injured person could recover, no matter how catastrophic the injuries may have been. Even worse, the limits have not changed since 1986 even though the cost of living, medical care, and everything else has multiplied many times over.
The limits on recovery are as follows:
- No one person can recover more than $300,000.00 for an injury due to the negligence or gross negligence of a governmental agency, no matter the amount of medical costs incurred, no matter the amount of lost income or how catastrophic the injury is, including death.
- These limits on recovery apply to governmental agencies and medical facilities, including hospitals. Examples of these facilities include Spartanburg Medical Center and its medical practices and the Medical University of South Carolina hospitals and medical practices.
- The exception for limitations on recovery against government hospitals and medical providers is limited to $1,200,000.00 if the injury was caused by the negligence or gross negligence of a licensed physician.
- Later, these same limitations on recovery were applied to Non-Profit Groups, including not for profit hospitals and medical practices. Examples of this would include Prisma Health and all their many medical practices.
- In certain circumstance, the injured person or his or her Estate, must prove, not just negligence, but gross negligence to recover anything, which is an extremely high standard of proof in South Carolina.
As citizens, we should implore our State Legislature to bring these recovery levels to today’s standards based upon the extremely inflated cost of medical care and high cost of living. Medical costs have increased many times over and often, with serious injuries, caps do not even allow sufficient money to pay medical bills, much less for loss of earnings and for serious disabilities.
We stand ready to review cases where significant injury has occurred due to improper treatment.
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