06 January ,2014 By Admin Category:Personal Injury

Have you or a loved one been in a car accident recently where you feel fault may be in dispute? Do you ever wonder how insurance adjusters and lawyers determine legal cause and fault? California law addresses these issues in what is called contributory and comparative negligence.

To determine who is legally responsible, in other words, at fault, for a particular car accident can be a long and tedious process.  The individual party bringing the lawsuit or making an insurance claim for damages must prove that the other party was negligent, and therefore, at fault.  However, even if the plaintiff can do this, the defendant can still avoid full responsibility for the damages caused from the accident by established a defense to the cause of the accident.

The systems of comparative and contributory negligence in car accidents are designed to deal with situations in which both the plaintiff and defendant have contributed to the accident.  This means that both parties were somehow negligent and caused the accident because of their respective negligence.  For example, assume that John was making a lane change but did not turn on his signal light and immediately entered the lane where Mary was driving.  Mary was speeding and was looking through her purse at the time.  Both of their vehicles collide shortly thereafter.  In this scenario the question of who is at fault is not clear-cut, as both John and Mary may have contributed to the accident.

How liability is treated depends on which state you live in.  In California, like most states, follow a comparative negligence system.

Comparative Negligence

Comparative negligence is sometimes coined as a “partial defense” because the comparative negligence system allocates fault between the parties. In California, a defendant can raise a partial defense, saying that the plaintiff was partially at fault for the accident too and should share in the damages.

Say that John sues Mary for his injuries because of the accident. Under a comparative negligence system, John may be found 30% negligent and Mary 70% negligent because both of them were found to have failed to exercise reasonable care while driving.  If the total available compensation is $200,000, John will receive $140,000 instead of the total amount; his amount is reduced according to his degree of fault (30%).

States have different comparative negligence systems.  All comparative negligence systems have one of two methods:

• Pure comparative negligence. In pure comparative negligence states such as California, accident victims can recover some compensation for their injuries even if they were more negligent than the defendant’s degree of negligence.
•  Modified comparative negligence. In modified comparative negligence states, an accident victim’s recovery is limited if the victim’s fault exceeds a certain percentage of fault. Generally, the level of negligence must be mess than 50% for the accident in order to recovery for injuries.

Contributory Negligence

If you are being sued in a car accident case and the controlling law is contributory negligence, then you can avoid liability entirely if you can show that plaintiff’s own negligence was a contributing factor to the car accident itself.  This holds true even if the plaintiff’s own negligence compromised just 1% fault.  This type of negligence standard places a strong hurdle against a plaintiff when the evidence shows that the plaintiff was negligent as well.

Establishing Negligence

Every person on the road, whether you are in a vehicle or not, must act with reasonable care to protect his or her own safety as well as the safety of others.  If a victim of a car accident fails to exercise reasonable care and it results in an accident, then the car accident victim may be found negligent and will be considered partially at fault for the injuries he or she has suffered.

Some examples of plaintiff conduct that might be considered negligent are: speeding while driving, making sudden movements as a pedestrian such as running into a street, or failing to obey traffic signals such as running a red light or a violation of the California Vehicle Code.

Plaintiff’s Negligence must be a Contributory Factor in the Accident

An important factor that most individuals overlook is whether the victim’s negligence actually contributed to the accident.  If a victim was negligent but that negligence did not actually cause the accident, then the defendant cannot raise this defense.  Therefore, the negligence must have “helped” cause the accident. 

For example, if John raises the defense of negligence against Mary, who was speeding and looking through her purse, he has to establish that her behavior (speeding and looking through her purse while driving) played a role in causing the accident and subsequent injuries.

Getting Help

Dealing with car accident defenses and who was at fault can be a daunting task and complicated in nature.  Hire an attorney that understands these legal standards and who will fight for the maximum recovery for you.