Car-accident injury cases often have high damage payouts, especially if you hire a good personal-injury lawyer to prosecute your case. However, there's a chance that the defendant might throw down a "comparative negligence" defense to help mitigate the damages. What is this defense and how could it affect your car-accident injury case?

What Is Comparative Negligence?

Comparative negligence is a defense used by the defendant that states the plaintiff was at least partially responsible for their injuries. Defendants who clearly injured a person often use this defense as a way of decreasing the possibility of paying high damages.

In a car-accident case, this typically requires showing that the defendant was driving in a way that was negligent and that this driving behavior contributed to the accident. It can't have actually caused the accident, as this would make the plaintiff negligent rather than the defendant. With this defense, the defendant was clearly behaving in a negligent way and is admitting it.

Gauging Whether Your Case Could Be Affected By This Defense

Gauging comparative negligence will vary depending on the type of personal-injury case being pursued. In a car-accident injury case, you have to have been driving in a way that contributed to the accident. For example, if you were texting and driving over the speed limit when you were hit by a driver who was running a red light, the defendant could argue for comparative negligence.

This is often a tough defense because it requires proving that your behavior actually contributed to the accident. For example, in the case mentioned above, it would have to be shown that your speeding was what caused you to be in the intersection when the defendant ran the red light. Proving this requires evidence such as police reports and eye-witness testimony.

How Your Damages Might Be Affected

There are two forms of comparative negligence that can be used to alter your damage: pure and modified. Pure comparative negligence includes totaling your awarded damages and then reducing them based on how much the jury believed you contributed to the accident.

For example, if the jury decided that your speeding made you 30 percent negligible in the above-mentioned incident (judging the defendant's illegal act of running a red light to be more problematic), you would earn 70 percent of your damages. However, modified comparative negligence will negate your damages if you were found equally at fault with the defendant.

So if you were awarded $50,000 in the case above, and the jury decided that you were 49 percent negligible, you would receive 51 percent of your damages, or $25,500. However, if they decided that texting and speeding made you 50 percent liable, you would receive $0 in damages.

Clearly, comparative negligence is an important defense to understand in a car-accident case. It is commonly used because it is often easy to argue that other driving actions could be considered negligent. Make sure to hire a personal-injury lawyer, such as one from The Bernstein Law Firm, to avoid this problem.