Comparative negligence

What is comparative negligence?

Comparative negligence is the rule that divides responsibility among everyone who contributed to an accident. Rather than treating fault as all or nothing, a jury assigns each party a percentage.

Your award is then reduced by your own percentage. If damages are assessed at a given figure and you are found 20 percent at fault, you receive 80 percent of it.

How does New Jersey's version work?

New Jersey follows modified comparative negligence with a 51 percent bar under N.J.S.A. 2A:15-5.1. You may recover while your share of fault is 50 percent or less, and you recover nothing once it exceeds that.

The cliff at that threshold is what makes these cases sharp. Moving a plaintiff from 50 to 51 percent does not reduce the award incrementally, it eliminates it entirely, which is why defense strategy so often aims at that single point.

Fault is also allocated among defendants, not just between you and one other party. In a case with several responsible parties the percentages must total 100, so defendants often contest each other's shares as well as yours.

How is fault actually allocated?

Juries weigh conduct against the circumstances, and certain arguments recur.

• Speed, following distance and attention in vehicle collisions
• Whether a pedestrian used a marked crosswalk
• Footwear, phone use or distraction in a fall case
• Whether a hazard was arguably open and obvious
• Seatbelt use, which is treated under its own rules

Why does the percentage matter so much?

Because it operates on the entire award. A shift of ten percentage points changes the outcome by ten percent of everything, which in a serious case is substantial.

It also drives settlement. Insurers assign a fault percentage early and price offers against it, so contesting an inflated allocation is often more valuable than arguing about individual medical bills.

It shapes trial strategy too. Because the threshold is a cliff rather than a slope, cases near the line are frequently tried rather than settled, since both sides face very different outcomes on either side of it.

Common questions

What if I was 50 percent at fault?

You can still recover in New Jersey at exactly 50 percent, reduced by half. Recovery is barred only once your share exceeds 50 percent.

How is fault split among several defendants?

The jury assigns each a percentage. Whether you can collect the full amount from one of them depends on joint and several liability, which New Jersey limits by fault share.

Does admitting any fault at the scene end my claim?

No, and people often apologize reflexively without knowing what happened. Such statements can be explained, though it is better to describe facts than to assign blame at the scene.

Who decides my percentage of fault?

A jury decides at trial after hearing the evidence. Most cases settle instead, in which case the percentage is negotiated between the parties based on what a jury would likely find on those facts.