Geico Pays $2.15 Million After Bad-Faith Refusal in Dorchester County Rear-End Case

Terence Weese, a plumber and father of three, was at a full stop at a traffic light on Bacons Bridge Road in Summerville in 2016 when a teenage driver rear-ended his vehicle. The collision appeared routine at first. It was not.

The crash left Weese with disc herniation to four upper vertebrae and spinal cord compression. Conservative care did not hold. Surgeons performed a three-level spinal fusion procedure, generating $353,000 in past medical costs alone, with another $170,000 projected for future treatment. For a working tradesman, the timeline of surgeries, recovery, and reduced capacity compounded the financial harm.

Mark Bringardner of the Joye Law Firm in Charleston took the case. The at-fault teenager, Samantha Johnson, carried a $50,000 liability policy through Geico. Bringardner presented the claim and demanded the full policy limits early. Geico declined. That decision would prove costly.

At trial in Dorchester County in November 2018, Bringardner argued Johnson had been distracted at the moment of impact, possibly looking at a cell phone. Geico acknowledged she was at fault but contested causation, contending that Weese's pain came from pre-existing degenerative conditions rather than the collision. After three days of testimony and roughly two hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of $2.2 million on November 28, 2018, reported at the time as the largest automobile accident verdict in Dorchester County history.

Because the judgment vastly exceeded Johnson's $50,000 policy, her family filed a separate bad faith lawsuit against Geico, alleging the insurer had failed to protect its policyholder by refusing to settle within available limits when the facts clearly justified it. The claim opened a second front of liability for Geico beyond the original verdict.

In 2019, facing that bad faith case approaching trial, Geico agreed to a global settlement of $2.15 million, covering both the underlying personal injury judgment and the bad faith claims in a single resolution. South Carolina Lawyers Weekly listed the result in its 2019 roundup of the state's top verdicts and settlements under the motor vehicle and insurance bad faith category.