how to determine comparative negligence

The concept of comparative negligence deals with the guilt that can be rightfully assigned to a person in the event of an accident. When you’re looking at drunk driving, the responsibility of the driver for the accident is absolute, both in the eyes of the law and the insurance companies. Even then, many times, no single party can be faulted for the accident. It is in cases like these that comparative negligence has to be calculated, so that the percentage of blame to be assigned to each party can be decided.

How comparative negligence is different from contributory negligence

The statute governing contributory negligence states that if a person is proven guilty of negligence that contributed to the accident that caused his or her injury, he or she has shown “contributory negligence”.

The statute for pure contributory negligence states that if the person is proven guilty of even the slightest contributory negligence, he cannot sue for damages. Comparative negligence, also called non-absolute contributory negligence outside of the United States, is what brings down the damages that the plaintiff can recover.

how to find the comparative negligence

• Conduct an investigation into the accident. If you didn’t witness the accident, get in touch with someone who did. Make an observation of where the accident took place. Write down the situation and circumstances of the parties that were involved in the accident. For instance, if you’re looking into an accident which involves an area under construction, then you might want to take a look at the safety measures in place, the work history of the worker, the dangers that a worker faces, and the aspects that the management might have overlooked.
• Get reports from the police, the hospital, and eyewitnesses. These are what will give the information used by the courts and the insurance companies, to arrive at the percentage of comparative negligence.  It’s important to get your facts straight, on where, when and how things happened as they did.
• Get in touch with insurance companies and get a hold of their official report on the incident. Their reports could differ from other reports and can be used to strengthen or weaken arguments. Moreover, the calculation for the comparative negligence will be included in the report.

These are the ways to go about calculating comparative negligence. Hope this information was relevant.