If you live, work or play in Los Angeles, then you know how congested the freeways can become. You also know that all that traffic leads to some pretty nasty multi-car pile-ups on an all too frequent basis. There are over 26 million vehicles registered in Los Angeles County and over 12 million of them are on the road at any given time of the day. The county of Los Angeles has an impressive freeway system in place to hold all that traffic, but when you get that many cars all moving at one time, accidents are bound to happen. One question that Los Angeles car accident attorney Emery Ledger of Ledger & Associates gets asked a lot is “Who is at fault in one of those multi-car pileups?”
The answer to that question can be found in the laws regarding negligence in that State of California. Negligence is the legal word used to describe “fault”. Negligence is a complicated concept and exactly what is considered negligence can vary from state to state. The State of California, for instance, uses a comparative negligence approach, according to Los Angeles car accident attorney Emery Ledger of Ledger & Associates. There are two basic approaches to negligence – comparative and contributory. Under a contributory approach, if you “contributed” at all to the accident then you cannot recover anything for your injuries. Most states have abandoned the comparative approach as the results tend to be unfair. Under a comparative approach, like California’s, the negligence is apportioned according to the amount each party “contributed”. If this all sounds confusing, then imagine a simple scenario wherein car number one slammed on her brakes unexpectedly causing car number two to collide with her from the rear. Imagine also that car number two was traveling faster than the speed limit. Under a contributory approach they may both be to blame for the accident so neither one of them can recover anything. Under a comparative approach, the negligence (blame) will be apportioned to each of them – maybe 80% to driver number one and 20% to driver number two – and the driver with less blame can still recover. The amount that a driver under a comparative negligence approach can recover will then be reduced by their percentage of blame. Again, under the above scenario, if the drive two’s total damages were $10,000 then that amount would be reduced by 20% and he would only be able to recover $8,000.
As you can see, the laws of negligence are complicated. In a multi-car pile-up, each driver may share a percentage of the blame – or negligence. A car accident attorney is best suited to make a determination whether you will be able to recover in a multi-car pile-up based on his years of experience investigating and handling car accident cases. Car accidents with multiple vehicles can take months, even years, to sort through and determine who was actually at fault. If you have been involved in a multi-car pile-up and would like and experienced Los Angeles attorney to evaluate your cases and your chances of recovering compensation for your damages, then contact experienced car accident attorney Emery Ledger of Ledger & Associates online at www.ledgerlaw.com or at 1-800-300-0001
