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Auto Accidents: You Can Receive Compensation, Even If You Are Partially At Fault

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Comparative Negligence

The state of California protects your right to compensation if you are injured in an auto accident; even when you are found to be partially at fault. In this state, "comparative negligence" allows for responsibility to be placed on the injured party as well. If an accident happens because of the negligence of one or more people, the judicial courts and/or jury will allocate each party's respective percentage of fault.

As an example, if another driver makes a left turn in front of you while you are driving a car faster than the posted speed limit, maybe you are partly responsible due to your excess speed. This is the case if how fast you were going, was another reason the accident occurred. The law allows for a reduction of your recovery that is consistent with how much it was your fault. If it is determined that the accident was in part caused by how fast you were driving (let's say it contributed 10%), then the amount paid by the insurance of the left-turning driver’s would drop by that same percentage, 10%. In other words, a claim worth $100,000 would be lowered by ten percent; however, $90,000 is still a lot to have recovered.

There are a number of drivers that believe if it's even partially their own fault they got hurt they don't deserve to be compensated, but that is false. Until a decision made by the California Supreme Court over 30 years ago (Li versus The Yellow Cab Company (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804, 810), following an outdated rule, if a plaintiff contributed in even a minor way to their own accident or injury, the state barred any recovery. Joint and several responsibility replaced the old "all-or-nothing" rule.

Joint and Several Responsibility

The "joint and several" responsibility is a concept that may be as important as the comparative negligence doctrine. Before 1986, California law dictated that when an accident had been caused by two or more negligent parties, the victim was entitled to recover all damages against any one of them. This will at time seem like a huge expense to the person who has the least cause of the injury, because the party with the most money ruling has been changed. The revised and current rule kept the traditional joint and several liability policy with respect to special or economic damages but assumed a rule of several liability for general or noneconomic damages; this provides that each defendant is liable only to his degree of fault for the portion of the plaintiff's general damages. (Evangelatos versus Superior Court (1988) 44 Cal. 3d 1188) Financial recovery may be possible for "medical expenses, loss of earnings, burial costs, loss of use of property, costs of repair or replacement, costs of obtaining substitute domestic services, loss of employment and loss of business or employment opportunities" as a result of an accident. The definition of Noneconomic Damages includes any "pain, suffering, inconvenience, mental suffering, emotional distress, loss of society and companionship, loss of consortium, and injury to reputation and humiliation" you may experience as a result of an accident. (California Civil Code Section 1431.2)

The Fair Responsibility Act of 1986, also called Proposition 51, brought this law into being. This complicated rule can be understood with the following hypothetical example:

You are driving on a flat, open roadway when another driver stops his vehicle in the opposing lanes of traffic, causing a traffic flow interruption, and another driver who is speeding then swerves across the median divider line to avoid hitting that first driver's vehicle from the opposing side of traffic, thereby causing that second driver's vehicle to hit your vehicle head-on. 70% of the fault is assigned to the driver of the stopped vehicle, while 30% goes to the driver that swerved. For medical expenses and lost wages, your special damages add up to $100,000; for pain and suffering, your noneconomic damages are adjudicated at $200,000. Regrettably, the driver most at fault in the accident was uninsured and without assets. Due to the existence of joint and several liability for special damages, the driver who swerved (if they have insurance that provides coverage) would be held responsible for paying $160,000 (covering 100% of economic damages and 30% of general damages). The injured party would receive 30% of $300,000.00 in total damages or $90,000.00 if no one is found liable for economic damages. Either driver, careless or not, is protected by this rule that allows for greater recovery in terms of special damages, even though it was originally written to protect people with "deep pockets."

Every automobile accident represents a unique set of circumstances, and the possible causes are unlimited. In order to make your way through the maze of legal facts, you should seek the assistance of an experienced trial attorney.

Article Source: http://www.article-exposure.com

For more than 15 years, Paul W. Ralph has been an Orange County personal injury attorneys successfully handling court cases and lawsuits in California. Because of the importance of the cases handled in the past as an Orange County bike accident lawyer and other important personal injury cases.

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