How fault will be determined in the context of a negligence suit depends on how the state you are in views fault. Generally, there are two theories of fault: contributory and comparative negligence.
On average, there are six million car accidents in the United States every year. In the vast majority of cases, the accident will have been caused due to the negligent actions or inactions of one of the drivers involved. Any given car accident may cause untold personal and property damage. Deciding which party is at fault in a car accident can be complicated but necessary for demonstrating who bears the cost of the consequences.
In order to recover damages in a lawsuit for injuries suffered in a car accident, you must prove that the other driver’s negligence was the cause of the accident and your injuries. Cause (or fault) is one of the critical elements of a personal injury case in a car accident. Fault can be determined by assessing whether or not the accident would have happened but for the conduct of the negligent driver. The injuries suffered must also be foreseeable as a result of the accident.
Why is Fault Important in a Car Accident?
In any personal injury car accident lawsuit, the plaintiff must prove four key elements: duty, breach of duty, causation, and damages. For car accident cases, duty and breach are fairly easy to demonstrate in most cases. Any driver on a public road imputably owes a duty to the other persons within the driver’s sphere of influence. The duty that the driver owes is one of reasonable care, and acting in ways that another reasonable person would not (i.e., speeding or running a red light) are clear signs of breach. Fault is equally as important as the other elements in a car accident lawsuit but is often fraught with complexities. You will not be successful in your personal injury lawsuit after a car accident if you cannot demonstrate that the accident was the other driver’s fault.
Evidence of Fault in a Car Accident
Sometimes, the circumstances of a car accident will clearly indicate the at-fault party. For instance, if the accident occurred when one car rear-ended another car, the driver of the car in the rear is almost always the one at fault. However, when the immediately apparent facts of the accident don’t specifically indicate fault in one direction, courts (and insurance companies, for that matter) will often rely on certain surrounding information to make a decision. This can include statements from any eyewitnesses or information gathered in a police report.
Theories of Fault in a Car Accident
How fault will be determined in the context of a negligence suit depends on how the state you are in views fault. Generally, there are two theories of fault: contributory and comparative negligence.
Contributory Negligence
Under contributory negligence laws, plaintiffs are unable to recover for damages suffered in a car accident if they are found to have contributed to the accident. In other words, if you are found even 1% responsible for a car accident, even if the other driver is 99% responsible, you won’t be able to win your lawsuit. This theory is obviously extremely restrictive and has increasingly been replaced in most jurisdictions. Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and the District of Columbia are the only jurisdictions that currently employ contributory negligence theories of fault.
Comparative Negligence
Comparative negligence still takes into account the plaintiff’s participatory negligence, if there is any. However, in most instances, this theory still allows the plaintiff to recover at a reduced rate respective of their own part in the accident or injuries.
Some states operate under a pure comparative negligence theory, which allows a court to determine the exact percentage of fault each party bears in a given circumstance. If the court finds that the defendant was only 30% responsible for the accident, the plaintiff will only be able to recover 30% of the damages claimed against that defendant.
Other states use “modified” comparative negligence rules, which combine the proportionality of pure comparative negligence with the stringency of contributory negligence. Courts will still assign proportional blame to each party to the accident but will not pay out damages if the defendant is less than 50% responsible. Some states even block damages at exactly 50%.
A personal injury attorney can help you determine which theory of fault your jurisdiction follows and what a court’s reaction to your case would likely be.
Assigning Damages to Each Party in a Car Accident
Damages in car accident cases are typically assigned based on the percentage of blame assigned to each party. However, each driver’s actions might change what damages they are responsible for.
For example, let’s say that Driver A ran a red light, causing a collision with Driver B’s car. Driver A would be responsible for the property damage to Driver B’s car, as the crash wouldn’t have happened but for Driver A’s behavior. However, if Driver B was not wearing a seatbelt, Driver A’s car accident lawyer could argue that Driver B’s failure to wear a seatbelt was the superseding cause of Driver B’s injuries. In such a case, a court might order Driver A to compensate Driver B for the damage to their car but might blame the personal injuries on Driver B’s lack of seatbelt. That could limit Driver B’s ability to recover compensation for their injuries.
The court could alternatively assign partial damages to each driver, depending on the state’s comparative negligence rules. This is especially true if the accident was severe enough that Driver B would have still been injured if they had been wearing a seatbelt.
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