The legal terms of contributory negligence or comparative negligence can have a significant impact on the victim’s ability to recover for an accident. These terms can completely eliminate or reduce the amount of compensation available to the victim.
Fault in an Accident
After an accident, one of the key determinations is who is at fault for the accident. This usually comes down to determining whether a party was negligent. Negligence is usually defined as acting in a careless manner in a manner that causes the other person to suffer damages. If the case goes to court, the jury determines which party was at fault for the accident. The accident victim who is seeking to recover damages has the burden of showing the other party was at fault.
Comparative and contributory negligence systems help determine how the process will go if more than one party is at fault for an accident.
Fault from Multiple Parties
In some car accident cases, more than one party is at fault for an accident. Two or more parties may have been negligent. These accident cases are the ones that are affected by the principles of contributory negligence and comparative negligence. Different states follow different rules.
Contributory Negligence
The concept of contributory negligence holds that if a person’s own negligence contributed to an accident, he or she cannot hold another person responsible for the accident. In states that follow this rule, even if the person was only one percent at fault for the accident, he or she loses the right to recover. Due to the harshness of this rule, many states no longer follow it.
Comparative Negligence
Comparative negligence compares the amount of fault that should be attributed to each party for causing the accident or injury. The judge or jury listens to evidence regarding the car accident to determine the amount of fault that should be attributed to each party. This system included two different schemes:
Pure Comparative Fault
Under a pure comparative fault system, each party to the accident was able to recover damages that was equal to the amount of fault of the other party. This means that a driver can sue another driver even if he or she was more at fault than the second driver. However, his or her damages are reduced by the amount at fault he or she was in the accident. For example, if a driver’s speeding was determined to be 70 percent at fault and another driver’s inattention was determined to be 30 percent at fault, the speeder could pursue the inattentive driver for 30 percent. If the speeder suffered $100,000 in damages, the speeder could potentially get $30,000. If the inattentive driver suffered damages of $100,000 as well, he or she could recover $70,000 from the speeder.
Modified Comparative Fault
In a modified comparative fault system, the injured party can collect damages from the other parties at fault so long as his or her own negligence was less than 50 percent of the cause of the accident. If his or her negligence is greater than this amount, he or she cannot recover any damages.
Establishing Negligence
The terms of contributory negligence or comparative negligence serve as absolute or partial defenses to the claim. Every driver has the duty to exercise reasonable care in order to protect the safety of others, as well as his or her own. If a victim breaches this duty, the victim may be found to have been negligent. Some examples of negligence include interfering with the driver’s driving, riding with a driver who is in a dangerous state such as drunk or tired, speeding or riding in a known defective vehicle.
