OK, what justification is there to keep the “contributory negligence” law on the books? Apparently it means if I had even a tiny hand in an accident, I can’t recover any losses.
Like, oh, a truck driver stops right in the middle (not the side) of a residential street for no apparent reason, I end up stopping my bike close to the truck, and the truck backs up onto my bike, causing $2500 worth of damage while the truck is not even scratched. Apparently I contributed to the accident by being too close to the truck, while the driver is of course “at fault” for crashing into a stationary vehicle (says so right there on the police report). And I’m the one stuck with 100% of the monetary damages. How is that fair?
I guess I should have mentioned that I live in Alabama. From that cite: “Maryland, Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, and the District of Columbia retain contributory negligence as a complete defense to negligence.” (bolding mine)
It ensures that you cannot profit by deliberately entangling yourself in the situation, unless you can do so without appearing to be negligent yourself.
And quite apart from insurance fraud, why should you be rewarded for being negligent just because someone else was being more negligent?
1/ one is not “rewarded” by receiving damages for loss. One is merely not out of pocket to the extent one would otherwise have been.
2/ You don’t appear to understand the position. The very essence of comparative negligence is that you don’t get anything to the extent you are negligent. You just get something to the extent someone else is.
3/ The answer to your question is “because they were negligent”.
Never heard of the notion that contributory negligence is a complete defence - probably because in my jurisdiction this odd bit of the common law has long been replaced by a more logical statute:
How does anyone profit by being compensated for damages? Even if I were awarded 100% of the repair cost, it would have gone straight to the manufacturer of my bike to pay for the replacement parts. And I’d be without the use of the bike for a while, and have to arrange for alternative transport.
If they said the accident was caused by the other driver, but my negligence also contributed it, so the other driver’s insurance would only pay 60% of the damages - I think I would have accepted that. I just don’t see why the law is rigged so I have to pay 100% of damages, and the other driver pays nothing.
(Well, maybe his insurance rate still went up? If so, the only one profiting from the accident is his insurance company.)
It was caused by both parties - if the driver had not been negligent it wouldn’t have happened, but if you hadn’t been negligent by putting your bike so close behind the truck it also wouldn’t have happened. If you had not been acting negligently, your bike would not have been damaged.
In this case, I wouldn’t have ended up right behind his truck if the idiot hadn’t pulled out of a driveway right in front of me and then slammed the brakes right in the middle of a road. And the accident wouldn’t have happened if he didn’t back up in the middle of the road, and continued to back up, ignoring my honking.
But even if I accept that the accident was “caused” by both parties, why do I get stuck with 100% of the expenses resulting from this accident?
I’m now wondering if the insurance companies lobby to keep this law in the books. Wouldn’t this law almost always work in their favor?
The logic behind strict contributory negligence (at least in the situation you outlined) is that no damages would have occurred if the plaintiff had not committed the first negligent act. Therefore, the plaintiff can’t recover. It kinda sucks for the plaintiff that the damages also wouldn’t have occurred but for the negligence of the defendant, which is why most states soften it down to comparative (or comparative with a threshold).
Frankly, I fail to see how you could have been found negligent here, unless you pulled up six inches away from the truck. That’s your real problem.
Because you wouldn’t sue just for the cost of repairs. You’d sue for everything you can get, which would include the value of repairs, PICA (penalties, interest, costs and attorney’s fees) and additional damages for pain and suffering, lost use of your bike while undergoing repair, loss/damage to an irreplaceable item (you know, 'cause you had a Mickey Mantle rookie card in the spokes) and so on.
IOW, you’d get a dollar amount more than sufficient to replace/repair the bike, your attorney would get a chunk, and you’d probably get at least a percentage on top.
Unless $2,500 is small-claims territory in AL, in which case the truck driver probably wouldn’t show up.
And comparative negligence is a trial lawyer’s wet dream. Since no two accidents are identical, how do you assign a specific percentage of fault? You hire attorneys, pay hourly fees, and fight it out.
In your example, what percentage would the biker be at fault? 20%? 5%? 1%? We would make our attorneys rich fighting over the scraps.
Contributory negligence, while not perfect, at least gives people a bright line rule about damages they might receive. And it evens out as well; maybe in one situation you didn’t get compensated because you were partially at fault, but in the next instance you don’t have to pay when you were mostly at fault.
It is based on the idea that life is inherently dangerous and/or unfair and that unless you can prove outright and 100% fault by the other party, then chalk it up to “Life Sucks” and move on…
Have you spoken to an attorney about this? Most PI attorneys will at least give you an initial free consultation.
You are correct that insurance companies do benefit in contributory negligence states. However, it doesn’t mean that a lot of suits don’t get filed and that they don’t have to spend money litigating the issue.
Most of which are actual outlays. I’d need to see a post from an actual attorney with experience in this particular field and this particular juris before I’d believe that scr4 is going to be able to claim pain and suffering when he wasn’t injured, and penalties, and damages for loss/damage to an irreplaceable item (that scr4 has just told us is replaceable) in a way that he’d actually make a profit.
IME, people think this sort of action results in manna from heaven but the reality is different, and scr4 wouldn’t even break even, even assuming he could sue.
There’s no good reason for it. The only reason it’s still on the books is that it’s arcane enough that nobody knows about it except those who’ve been injured by it, so there’s little incentive for the legislatures to change it. And you just happened to get screwed.