A rough honest answer?

If the drunk driver has only South Carolina minimum limits, your case may be worth more than the insurance money sitting on the table.

That minimum is usually just $25,000 per person for bodily injury. In a wreck with an hourly construction worker who loses regular overtime, needs follow-up treatment, and has a family depending on that union insurance staying intact, that money disappears fast.

If there is decent coverage, a clean drunk-driving crash with real injuries can land anywhere from the high five figures into six figures.

If there is only a bare-bones policy, your practical answer may be $25,000 plus whatever uninsured or underinsured coverage is available, and that second part is where the case either gets saved or dies.

The part people miss: workers' comp does not end the car claim

If you were driving a company truck to a job, between sites, or doing anything your employer can tie to work, workers' comp usually jumps in first on the medical side.

That helps in the short term.

It also creates a mess.

Workers' comp may cover the ER, ambulance, follow-up care, and some wage benefits. But that does not mean the drunk driver gets off cheap. It means comp will often want its money back out of any third-party settlement.

That reimbursement claim - the lien - is one of the biggest reasons a settlement number can look good on paper and still feel like garbage in your checking account.

A guy hears "your case settled for $80,000" and thinks he can breathe. Then part of it goes to medical reimbursement, part may go to comp, and now he is staring at rent, groceries, and a missed week on a framing crew where overtime was the difference between getting by and not.

Overtime is where the money fight gets ugly

South Carolina workers' comp wage checks are not built to make an hourly worker whole.

If your normal week is 40 hours on paper but 52 or 58 in real life, comp may not reflect what your household actually lost. That is especially true in construction, road crews, plant maintenance, port work around Charleston, and shutdown jobs where the money comes from long days and weekend hours.

In the drunk-driving claim, though, that overtime history matters.

If you regularly worked Saturdays, storm cleanup, night pours, or extra shifts on projects running up I-26, I-20, or along the Grand Strand buildout, those missed hours can push the value of the injury claim way up. Not because insurance companies are generous. Because documented lost income is one of the few things they can't completely hand-wave away.

Pay stubs matter more than your description of how hard you work.

That sounds cold, but that is how these files get valued.

So what is it actually worth?

It depends on four numbers more than anything else:

• the drunk driver's liability limits
• your employer vehicle policy and any UM/UIM coverage
• how much treatment you needed and whether you are still under restrictions
• how much real income you lost, including overtime, not just base pay

Here is a realistic South Carolina breakdown.

If you had an ER visit, physical therapy, missed a week or two, and healed up without surgery, the injury itself might be valued somewhere around $20,000 to $60,000 in a decent-liability case.

If you had a fracture, disc injury, shoulder tear, or months of restrictions that kept you off a crew truck or heavy equipment, now you are often looking at $60,000 to $150,000+ before you even get into punitive-damages arguments.

And yes, drunk driving raises the temperature.

South Carolina allows punitive damages in the right case, meant to punish reckless conduct, and DUI crashes are the kind of fact pattern that puts that issue on the table. But here is the catch: punitive damages are useless if there is no collectible money behind them. You cannot squeeze blood from a broke defendant with a $25,000 policy and a maxed-out paycheck.

That is why coverage matters more than outrage.

The work truck complication can help or hurt

Sometimes the company vehicle has underinsured motorist coverage. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes there is a fleet policy with meaningful limits. Sometimes the employer bought the cheapest thing possible and hoped nobody asked questions.

If your crash happened in a company truck on US-501 heading toward Myrtle Beach, on I-95 in the Pee Dee, or on a dark stretch of Highway 9 in Horry County, that vehicle policy may be the biggest source of recovery after the drunk driver's own insurance.

And there is another complication.

If your boss says you can come back "light duty" tomorrow but the job is a joke - sit in the trailer, answer a phone, sort tickets - insurance may argue your wage loss is over. Meanwhile your overtime is gone, your body still hurts, and your paycheck is nowhere near normal.

That difference belongs in the claim.

The number you care about is net, not gross

The gross settlement is lawyer talk and adjuster theater.

The number that matters is what is left after:

workers' comp reimbursement, medical balances that were not adjusted away, and any repayment issues tied to treatment.

That is why two guys with the same back injury can end up in very different places.

One has a drunk driver with a $100,000 policy and a company truck with another layer of underinsured coverage. He may net real money.

The other gets hit by a drunk with only $25,000, comp paid a chunk of treatment, and there is no UIM on the work vehicle. His case may still be "worth" more in theory, but theory does not pay the power bill.

The blunt South Carolina answer

If a drunk driver hit your work truck, workers' comp paid the hospital, and you are missing the overtime that keeps your family afloat, your case is often worth more than workers' comp alone but not automatically a fortune.

Real-world range?

$25,000 at the low end if coverage is bad. $50,000 to $150,000+ if injuries are solid and there is real insurance. More if there is major injury, surgery, strong UIM coverage, or collectible punitive exposure.

The trap is thinking "drunk driver" automatically means big check.

In South Carolina, from Greenville to Charleston to Myrtle Beach, the better question is always: how much coverage is actually in play after comp sticks its hand in the pot and after your lost overtime is proven on paper. That is the number that decides whether missing tomorrow's shift is a temporary hit or a financial wreck on top of the crash.