You’re driving home from work one evening, waiting at an intersection for oncoming traffic to clear so you can turn left. The traffic light turns yellow and it looks like the nearest oncoming car is slowing down. You begin to turn when suddenly, the oncoming car speeds into the intersection and plows into your passenger door, causing both you and the other driver personal injuries.
After settlement negotiations fail, you file a personal injury lawsuit against the other driver, who files a counterclaim for personal injuries against you. A jury finds that you failed to yield to oncoming traffic and were 60% at fault for the accident. The total amount of your damages, according to the jury, is $40,000. The other driver is found to be 40% at fault, with total damages of $70,000.
How much—if anything—can you and the other driver collect? The answer depends on the shared fault rules in your state. We’ll explain those rules and how they work.
What Does “Shared Fault” Mean?
Fault is a key concept in personal injury law. If you want to sue someone for damages, you must prove that the person you’re suing was at fault—meaning legally responsible—for your injuries. We begin with a brief discussion of fault. Then we’ll look at what happens if more than one person is at fault for an accident.
What Is Fault?
In legal terms, fault means legal responsibility for some mishap, like a car wreck, a dangerous product, or a slip-and-fall accident. In most personal injury cases, a person is found to be at fault because they were negligent.
Negligence means that a person failed to act as a reasonably careful person would have acted under similar circumstances. Courts and lawyers often use the words “fault” and “negligence” interchangeably, because as a practical matter in personal injury law, they usually mean the same thing.
Sometimes fault is easy to figure out. If you’re stopped at a light and a driver who is texting while driving rear ends you, there’s no question that the other driver is entirely at fault. Other times, as in our opening example, fault isn’t so clear. What happens when two or more people are responsible for an accident?
What is Shared Fault?
When more than one person might be legally responsible for an accident, the law has to have a way to share the fault among all those who are to blame. Shared fault rules do that. In general, there are two kinds of shared fault systems: Contributory fault (sometimes called “contributory negligence”) and comparative fault (sometimes called “comparative negligence”).
As we’ll see below, most states follow comparative fault rules. There are two kinds of comparative fault systems:
- pure comparative fault, and
- modified comparative fault.
How Does Pure Comparative Negligence Work?
In a pure comparative fault system, your share of the fault—no matter how much—simply reduces the amount of damages you can recover by that amount. If you’re 1% at fault, your damages are reduced by 1%. If you’re 99% at fault, your damages are reduced by 99%. But you’re only barred from any recovery at all if you’re 100% at fault—completely to blame—for an accident.
How Does Modified Comparative Negligence Work?
A modified comparative fault system basically splits the difference between the harsh contributory fault system and the very generous pure comparative fault system. In a modified comparative fault system, you’re allowed to collect damages as long as your share of the fault doesn’t equal or exceed the state law fault limit. In some states, the fault limit is 50%. In others, it’s 51%.
A 50% Fault Limit State
In a 50% fault limit state, if you’re found to be 50% or more at fault, you can’t collect any damages for your injuries. But if you’re less than 50% at fault, your share of the fault reduces your damages by that amount.
A 51% Fault Limit State
A 51% fault limit state works much the same as a 50% fault limit state, except that you’re not barred from collecting damages until your share of the fault reaches 51%. If your share of the fault is under 51%, the damages you can recover get reduced by your percentage of the fault.
The Key Difference Between Shared Fault Systems
The key difference between the different shared fault systems is the share of fault that acts as a “claim killer”—meaning it prevents you from collecting any damages. In a contributory fault state, any amount of fault kills your claim. At the other end of the spectrum, in a pure comparative fault state, you can collect some damages as long as you’re not 100% at fault. In modified comparative states, the fault limit acts as the claim killer.
Here’s a table that illustrates this difference.
|
Shared Fault System |
Contributory Fault |
Modified Comparative Fault 50% |
Modified Comparative Fault 51% |
Pure Comparative Fault |
|
Claim Killer % |
1% |
50% |
51% |
100% |
What’s Next?
It’s fairly easy to recite and to understand the shared fault rules. Figuring out what your share of the fault for an accident might be is a much more difficult task. That’s a skill that requires years of experience working with the shared fault rules in your state, and understanding how juries in your area tend to divide fault in different cases.
An experienced personal injury lawyer can help you sort it all out. Here’s how to find a lawyer who’s right for your and your case.