A reasonableness-only state for fees
Compare South Carolina to a state like New York, which applies a hard statutory sliding scale to medical malpractice attorney fees specifically. South Carolina has no equivalent figure anywhere in its rules for any type of personal injury claim, including malpractice — the fee simply must be reasonable under Rule 1.5, assessed case by case.
A real damages cap, but no fee cap to match
South Carolina does cap medical malpractice noneconomic damages — $580,461 per provider for 2026. But that cap says nothing about what the attorney can charge on whatever is actually recovered. The two questions — how much the client can recover, and how much the attorney's own fee can be — are governed by entirely separate rules.
The 2026 liability changes don't touch fees either
South Carolina's 2026 overhaul of joint and several liability narrowed which defendants remain fully liable for a judgment when found less than 50% at fault. That's a question about who pays a multi-defendant judgment — it has no bearing on the Rule 1.5 reasonableness standard governing the attorney's own percentage fee.
A distinctive combination among the states
Many states that leave personal injury fees uncapped still allow some form of damages cap, at least for medical malpractice. South Carolina fits that pattern — a real malpractice damages cap paired with an uncapped, reasonableness-only approach to the attorney's own fee, applied consistently across malpractice and every other personal injury claim type.