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With just two days left in South Carolina’s 2025 legislative session, House and Senate negotiators appear to have reached a compromise on a plan to ease liquor liability costs for struggling bars and restaurants.

House Bill 3430 does not provide the sweeping joint-and-several liability reform for all industries, as some lawmakers and businesses had hoped for. But lawmakers agreed to revisit a broader bill next year, according to local and state news .

The compromise bill focuses mostly on eating and drinking establishments, many of which have closed their doors in the last two years due to soaring insurance premiums triggered by a 2018 law that requires $1 million in coverage for places that sell alcohol. HB 3430 would soften that by requiring coverage with an annual aggregate limit of $1 million, instead of a total coverage of that level.

If passed and signed into law, the agreed-to bill also would:

• Allow juries to consider drunk drivers’ responsibility when crash victims sue bars that served alcohol to the driver.
• Limit bars’ and restaurants’ liability to no more than 50% of actual damages.
• Reduce insurance coverage required for venues at which alcohol makes up less than 40% of total sales, and which provide training for bartenders and servers. Coverage requirements also can be reduced for places that close early.
• Require digital age-verification for patrons.
• An establishment meeting the requirements “may reduce the required annual aggregate limit by two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. A licensee or permittee meeting the requirements … may reduce the required annual aggregate limit by one hundred thousand dollars per item satisfied,” the bill reads.

“A licensee or permittee meeting the requirements of item (5) may reduce the annual aggregate limit by five hundred thousand dollars. A licensee or permittee who has met the requirements of any combination of items (1)-(5) must receive the permitted reduction in the required annual aggregate limit for each item the licensee or permittee complies with provided a person licensed or permitted to sell alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption, which remains open after five o’clock p.m. to sell alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption, must at all times maintain coverage with an annual aggregate limit of at least three hundred thousand dollars during the entire period of the biennial permit or license.”

Insurers also would have to establish liquor liability mitigation measures and offer “reasonable premium discounts” for venues that take steps to reduce the risk to the of serving booze.

The measure does give some tort relief to other industries. Plaintiffs would have a burden of proof when naming defendants in a lawsuit, showing early in the process how the defendant’s breach of duty was a cause of the injurious action.

The full bill can be . The measure passed the House and is expected to be approved by the Senate today, May 7, according to news .

Photo: South Carolina Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, after debate on the bill in March. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)

Topics Legislation Liability South Carolina