If you have been in an accident in California, you may be concerned that you were partially to blame for the accident. This becomes an issue most often in car accidents; however it can apply to many different types of accidents. The good news is that even if you were partially to blame, you may still be entitled to compensation for the injuries you suffered as a result of the accident.
According to California accident layer Emery Ledger of Ledger & Associates, California follows the comparative negligence theory of negligence. In the United States, states are allowed to legislate their own laws, as long as they adhere to the protections afforded by the Constitution of the United States. Historically, states chose to follow one of two theories of negligence – contributory or comparative negligence. Under the contributory theory of negligence, if you “contributed” to the accident in any way, then you were not entitled to ANY compensation for the injuries that you suffered. Many times, this results in a very unfair outcome. Imagine that you were traveling five miles over the speed limit when a drunk driver slammed into you head on. Technically, you were negligent because you were speeding, however most people would agree that you should still be entitled to compensation as your contribution to the accident was extremely minimal. For this reason, all but five states have abandoned the contributory theory of negligence in favor of the comparative approach.
The comparative approach to negligence allows any number of people or entities to share the blame – or negligence –for an accident. Under comparative negligence, all parties to the accident that are determined to be negligent will be assigned a percentage of the blame. As long as your percentage of blame is less than the other parties’ percentage, then you may still be entitled to recover compensation for your injuries. To make comparative negligence easier to understand, imagine the following car accident:
You are driving along the freeway and are speeding about ten miles per hour over the speed limit. The car a few car lengths behind you hits a pot hole in the road and slams into your car. After an investigation, it turns out that the driver of that car was also intoxicated.
There are at least three possible negligent parties in that accident: the driver of the car that hit you, the city or state that was responsible for maintaining the freeway, and you. Your share of the negligence – based on speeding – would likely be far less than the negligence of either the city/state or the intoxicated driver. As an example, let’s say that your share of the negligence was 10%. If your total damages (injuries) totaled $10,000 in that accident, then you would be entitled to receive $10,000 minus the amount that represents your percentage of the negligence. In this case – 10% or $1,000. Therefore, you would still be entitled to collect $9,000 from the city/state and/or the intoxicated driver.
