August 5, 2021 | Personal Injury
If you or somebody you care about has been injured due to the careless or negligent actions of someone else, you should be able to recover compensation for your losses. However, what happens if you are partially responsible for causing the accident?
Indiana operates under what is called a “modified comparative negligence” system. This means that a person who is partially at fault for causing their own injury may still be able to recover compensation for their losses in some circumstances. Here, we want to discuss how modified comparative negligence works in an Indiana personal injury claim.
If you are involved in a vehicle accident (or in a type of accident, for that matter) caused by the careless or negligent actions of someone else, then you certainly want to be able to recover compensation for your losses. However, it is not uncommon for the at-fault party in these situations to push back against paying compensation by saying that the victim was responsible for causing their own injury.
The good news is that the state of Indiana operates under a modified comparative negligence system. This means that injury victims in this state can still recover compensation even if they are partially at fault for the incident. In Indiana, a 51% rule applies to these claims. This means that, in order to recover compensation, a person has to be less than 51% responsible for causing their own injury. If they are 51% or more responsible for an accident, they will not be able to recover compensation.
There is a caveat to this, though – the total amount of compensation an injury victim receives will be reduced based on their percentage of fault for the incident. For example, if a person is rear-ended and sustains $10,000 worth of medical bills and property damage, but it is discovered that they had faulty tail lights, it could be determined that they were partially responsible for causing the incident. Suppose that it is determined that the injury victim was 40% responsible for causing the collision because of the equipment malfunction. In this situation, they would receive $6,000 instead of the full $10,000.
Because the total amount of compensation an injury victim receives is reduced based on their percentage of fault, it is absolutely crucial that a full investigation be conducted into every injury case in order to properly determine liability. It is inevitable that the insurance carriers of the at-fault party will try to push back and place some of the blame on the injury victim.
If you or somebody you care about has been injured as a result of the careless or negligent actions of another individual, business, or entity, you need to speak to an Indiana auto wreck lawyer as soon as possible. An attorney can handle the entire case from beginning to end, starting with gathering the evidence needed to prove liability. An attorney will also work to properly calculate an injury victim’s total expected losses. They will push back against any claims of shared fault in an effort to secure maximum compensation for their client.