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Automobile Accidents: Receiving Monetary Compensation Even If Partially Responsible

By: Tim Bridger


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Comparative Negligence

Compensation, even when you are partially at fault in an auto accident, can be received in California. In this State, the doctrine that is known as 'comparative negligence', allows for responsibility to be apportioned in the event that the injured party also bears some responsibility for the accident. If one or more people had an accident due to carelessness, including the party suing for damages, the court and/or jury will determine who is responsible and the amount of blame each party holds.

Say that you are involved in an accident where you run into a car that pulls out in front of you, because you were driving over the speed limit. In that case, you may be partially at fault because of your speeding. There must be a determination that a "substantial factor" of the accident was the speed your vehicle was traveling. This law allows the jury or judge to reduce the plaintiff's recovery in proportion to the amount at fault. If it turns out that your speed contributed to the accident occurring (say it was ruled 10% of the fault), that would cause your recovery from the other driver to be reduced proportionate with the amount of your fault. This would, for example, lower a $100,000.00 claim for recovery to $90,000.00, which is still a considerable and fair amount.

A number of drivers assume that if they are partly responsible for their own injuries, they are not entitled to compensation, but this is incorrect. It wasn't until a decision made by a California Supreme court over 30 years ago (Li v. Yellow Cab Company (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804, 810) that the State followed an archaic legal doctrine of ruling out any possible recovery by someone who had contributed at all to the occurrence of their own accident and injuries. Joint and several responsibility replaced the old "all-or-nothing" rule, because comparative negligence is what "joint and several" responsibility is all about.

Joint And Several Responsibility

Before 1986, California law allowed any victim of negligence to recover their damages from any one party to the negligence, regardless of how much of the fault they bore. This law was changed because occasionally this resulted in unfairly placing the responsibility for the damages on a driver who was less culpable in the accident, but has greater means to pay damages. The new and current rule kept the traditional joint and several liability doctrine with respect to the awarding of economic (special) damages to an injured party, but changed the rule of several liability for noneconomic (general) damages, so that each defendant is only liable in proportion to that defendant's degree of fault for the plaintiff's noneconomic damages. (Evangelatos v. Superior Court (1988) 44 Cal. 3d 1188) Medical expenses, loss of earnings, burial costs, loss of employment, and loss of business or employment opportunities, costs of repair or replacement, loss of use of property, and costs of obtaining substitute domestic services are the economic damages. The noneconomical compensation covers losses that can include pain, suffering, inconvenience, mental anguish, emotional anguish, loss of the company of someone, loss of conjugal relations, damage to reputation and embarrassment.

Proposition 51, also called the Fair Responsibility Act of 1986, brought California Civil Code Section 1431.2 into law. This rule can be explained with the following hypothetical example:

If you are driving on a flat, straightaway, when driver #1 stops his vehicle in the opposing lanes (interrupting the flow of traffic), and driver #2, whose car is exceeding the safe speed limit, then swerves across the double yellow line to avoid hitting car #1, causing driver #2 to hit your vehicle in a head-on collision. 70% of the fault is assigned to the driver who was stopped in the road, and 30% to the driver who swerved. Medical expenses and lost wages total $100,000.00; pain and suffering total $200,000.00. The driver who was stopped (who was most at fault) unfortunately was uninsured and does not have any assets. The swerving driver is liable for and able to pay $160,000, since there is joint and several responsibility. Without joint and several responsibility for the economic damages, the injured party could only hope to recover up to $90,0000 or 30% of the total damages of $300,000. This rule was passed for the protection of those with "deep pockets", but it in effect assists in the protection of injured parties by the allowance of a larger recovery from either the careless drivers or at least from special damages.

No two automobile accidents are identical, and there are an infinite number of potential causes. An experienced trial attorney can help you navigate the facts, and the law, to reach a fair outcome.

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For more than 15 years, Paul W. Ralph has been an personal injury attorney Orange County successfully handling court cases and lawsuits in California. Because of the importance of the cases handled in the past as one of the most successful personal injury lawyers Orange County, Mr. Ralph has appeared on CNN, has been quoted on the front page of the Los Angeles Daily Journal



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