In An Accident - Who's At Fault?

By Tammy File

The subject of car accidents is one that is more complex than most people realize. This is doubly true when the issue of civil litigation emerges in the aftermath. When you are involved in an accident, you will need to procure qualified representation from a lawyer. You need to hire the most effective lawyer possible because the attorney must prove the most critical point in your case; the issue of fault.

There may be other considerations when it comes to road accidents, but you can be certain that any civil case will be centered on establishing where the blame for the accident should lie. Trying to allocate or shift the blame will be the lawyers' primary task.

And the concept of fault in in car accidents is not very simple to define. Fault is another way of defining negligence. The reason fault is critical to prove is because the party who is negligent in the accident is the one who has to pay for the damages which result from the accident. In some instances, fault is not difficult to prove. A person who drives intoxicated and causes an accident after running a red light far above the speed limit would clearly be the negligent party in an accident.

Unfortunately, not all accidents are quite so straightforward when it comes to establishing blame. We can demonstrate this by imagining a scenario where the drunk driver in the example above had a green light, and then collided with a sober driver who went through a red light. In this situation, it is not so clear-cut as to who is responsible, since both the drunk and the sober driver were negligent to some degree. Some people might assume that the blame would be equally shared, but that is not always the case. There are accidents in which 60% of the blame might be attributed to one driver, and 40% to the other. As you can see, the issue of blame is complicated, and a good lawyer is essential.

There are three categories of such comparative fault in car accidents and different states have adopted them. These categories are:

Pure comparative fault. 51% comparative fault. 50% proportional comparative fault.

A qualified lawyer needs to approach a case with a clear understanding of these three categories.

In states that use pure comparative fault, the amount of liability due to an injured party will be reduced by a percentage that represents the injured party's portion of the blame. In this scenario, if the injured party is held to be 30% responsible for the accident, then his or her damages entitlement will be reduced by 30%.

51% comparative fault refers to those who are more than 51% at fault for an accident end up losing their legal claim to injuries suffered in a car accident. This might be a rather harsh statute in some people's eyes but this is the rule in many states.

The 50% proportional comparative fault category is used in some states. In those states, any injured party who is deemed to be less than 50% responsible for the collision is entitled to seek damages for personal loss or injury.

The ability to claim damages from car accidents requires clearly establishing who is at fault and to what degree. Only an experienced and knowledgeable lawyer would be capable of proving where fault actually lies.

About the Author:

See www.shoalslawyers.com for more information. They specialize in injury cases including car and truck wrecks. The lawyers at Shoalslawyers.com handle estate and trust litigation, accidents, and injury cases. The writer is not associated with Hall-Tanner-Hargett.