Across the US, many people and injured daily and these injuries can be sustained because of a car accident, slip and fall accident, on the workplace, because of medical malpractice and so on. Now even though only a few of us a likely to suffer some kind of personal injury, but we are nonetheless likely to do so. And today we will be talking about negligence and comparative negligence.

Few interesting stats about comparative negligence

• Did you know that every year, nearly 31 million of Americans require medical treatment for the injuries they sustained? 2 million of them actually require hospitalization
• From all the injuries during the year, auto accidents account for roughly 3 million cases and result in nearly 40,000 fatalities. This means that the leading cause of death for people under the age of 55 are auto accidents.
• On the other hand, the third leading cause of death in the US are medical errors, which cause about 250 thousand fatalities.

Luckily, many of the US states, including Arizona as well, do allow injured victims the possibility to recover the damages from injuries caused by someone else’s negligence. And unlike many US states, Arizona also practices the legal theory of comparative negligence when determining the personal injury compensation.

Comparative negligence and how are you compensated?

Even though the state of Arizona does permit monetary compensation for the injuries sustained by a someone’s negligent behavior, the law still operates under comparative negligence. What does this mean? It means that the total blame (or responsibility) for the injuries (and the corresponding compensation) rests on the degree of responsibility of one or two parties, including the victim itself. This means that the victim can still be compensated even if they are also responsible for their injuries. So for example, if the injured victim is responsible for the 99% of their injuries, they can still receive compensation for the 1% of the blame that was someone else’s. This of course means that the victim’s compensation will be reduced by the part of their blame and liability. But, in the event that the victim intentionally caused or contributed to the injuries, recovering compensation is denied. Under the law of comparative negligence, the compensation for the injuries is calculate based on the conduct of each party involved in the accident, which caused the injuries. Then the fault is apportioned to each party, the total amount of compensation is multiplied with each percentage in order to determine how much compensation is the victim getting or the at fault party must pay. This basically means that the victim’s damages could be reduced by a certain percentage if they are, at some level, responsible for the injuries that they sustained. So if you, as the victim, are responsible for 50% of your injuries, your comparative negligence is 50% and thus the compensation for the damages/injuries sustained will be reduced by that percentage i.e., 50%. Determining the negligence in a persona injury case, especially if there is comparative negligence is not easy and can be complicated. So if you or your loved one get into a accident and sustain any injuries, make sure that you contact an experienced personal injury lawyer who will represent you and fight for your rights.