Greenville Car Accident Lawyer

By Tom Conits · Greenville personal injury attorney · August 1, 2026

What I Actually Do for Your Car Accident Case

I'm Tom Conits. Before opening my own practice here in Greenville, I worked for several of South Carolina's top personal injury firms, and I saw how car accident cases get handled at volume: a case manager takes your calls, a paralegal assembles your records, and the attorney appears at the end to approve a number. The system works fine for the firm. It works less well for the person with the herniated disc.

My practice is built the other way around. When you hire me, you get me. I photograph vehicles, pull the incident report, track down the camera behind the gas station counter, talk to your doctors' offices, and negotiate with the adjuster myself. The results on this site are cases I worked with my own hands, for real clients in Greenville and Spartanburg counties — not borrowed headlines.

Here is what handling your case looks like in practice:

• Investigation before argument. Photos, scene measurements, witness statements, the other driver's phone habits if texting is suspected, and preservation letters for any video before it's overwritten.
• Medical documentation done right. Your case is worth what you can prove. I make sure every injury, restriction, and future treatment recommendation is in the record, in your doctors' words.
• One point of contact — me. "Every client gets my personal cell number. Call or text me directly — you'll never chase a case manager."
• A straight answer on settling versus suing. When the insurer's number is fair, I'll tell you. When it isn't, I'll tell you that too, and what filing suit actually involves.

The consultation is free, there's no fee unless we win, and if you're reading this from a hospital bed at Prisma or your couch with a neck brace on, stay put — I make house calls.

Who Pays After a Car Accident in South Carolina?

South Carolina is an at-fault state. The driver who caused the wreck is legally responsible for the harm, and in practice that driver's liability insurance pays. Every South Carolina driver is required to carry minimum liability coverage of $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident for bodily injury, plus $25,000 for property damage — the "25/50/25" minimums set by S.C. Code § 38-77-140.

Two things about those numbers matter for your case:

First, minimum coverage runs out fast. A single ambulance ride, ER visit, and MRI can burn through much of a $25,000 policy before you've seen a specialist. When injuries are serious, finding every layer of available coverage — the at-fault driver's policy, an employer's policy if they were working, umbrella coverage, your own underinsured motorist coverage — is a large part of what I do.

Second, South Carolina protects you from uninsured drivers better than most people realize. Under S.C. Code § 38-77-150, every auto policy issued in this state must include uninsured motorist (UM) coverage at least equal to the minimums. If the driver who hit you carried no insurance — or fled the scene — your own UM coverage stands in, and using it is exactly what you paid premiums for. Underinsured motorist (UIM) coverage is optional in South Carolina, but if you bought it, it can bridge the gap when the at-fault driver's limits are too small for your injuries. Most people don't know which boxes they checked when they bought their policy; bring your declarations page to the consultation and I'll walk you through it line by line. I've also written the long version — UM versus UIM, how stacking works, and why your own insurer becomes the other side — in my full guide to uninsured motorist coverage in South Carolina.

One more coverage question I hear weekly: what if you were the passenger? Passengers are almost never assigned fault, and they often have more coverage available than they realize — the driver's policy, the other driver's policy, and their own UM/UIM can all be in play. I've traced whose insurance pays, and in what order, in my guide for injured passengers in South Carolina. And when the driver who hit you was a teenager, the claim usually runs through the parents' policy — and sometimes reaches the parents themselves under South Carolina's family purpose doctrine; I've explained how in teen driver accidents and parent liability.

Fault itself is proven with evidence, not assumptions: the incident report, physical damage patterns, witness accounts, video, and sometimes accident reconstruction. Insurers dispute fault more often than crash victims expect — which brings us to the rule that decides those disputes.

And if the question keeping you up at night is the stack of medical bills specifically — health insurance, MedPay, hospital liens, and what pays while the claim is pending — I've written a plain-English walkthrough: Who Pays My Medical Bills After a Car Accident in South Carolina?

What Damages Can You Recover After a Greenville Car Wreck?

A car accident claim in South Carolina isn't just the ER bill. Depending on your case, recoverable damages can include:

• Medical expenses — past and future: ambulance, hospital, surgery, imaging, physical therapy, injections, medication, medical equipment.
• Lost income — paychecks missed during recovery, and reduced earning capacity if your injuries change what work you can do.
• Property damage — repair or total-loss value of your vehicle and what was in it. How the total-loss call gets made, and the diminished value of a repaired car, are covered in my total loss and diminished value guide.
• Pain and suffering — the human cost: physical pain, sleepless nights, anxiety behind the wheel, the season of your kid's games you watched from a folding chair.
• Loss of enjoyment of life and permanent impairment where injuries are lasting.
• Punitive damages in cases of reckless conduct — drunk driving is the classic example.

The future-looking pieces are where unrepresented people get shorted. An adjuster will happily total up the bills you have today; the harder question is what the next five years of that knee looks like. I work with your treating physicians to document future care before we ever talk numbers, because you only get to settle once. Nowhere is that documentation fight sharper than in back and disc injuries — the most disputed claims in South Carolina car accident law — and I've written their playbook separately in back and disc injury cases. Two of the questions I hear most — how long a settlement takes and what a case is actually worth — get full-length, honest answers of their own.

The deadline: three years, sometimes less

Under S.C. Code § 15-3-530(5), you generally have three years from the date of the crash to file a car accident lawsuit in South Carolina. Claims against government entities generally carry a two-year deadline under the South Carolina Tort Claims Act. Blow the deadline and the case is over, regardless of how badly you were hurt. Three years sounds like plenty of time — but witnesses move, video is overwritten in days or weeks, and treatment takes months to complete. The strongest cases are built early.

Recent Car Accident Results — Net to the Client

Law firm advertising loves big gross numbers that shrink dramatically once fees, expenses, and medical liens come out. I publish the number that matters: what the client actually put in their pocket.

Every case is different. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Figures shown are net recoveries to the client after fees and expenses.

The $350,000 case is worth a sentence, because it shows how these cases are actually won: the driver who hit my client was texting, and nearby surveillance footage proved it — but only because I asked for that footage before it was overwritten. Evidence has a shelf life. See more on the results page.

Greenville Car Accident FAQs