Assigning blame to individuals following an accident is an important function of the law that can determine who is awarded certain sums of compensatory money. As medical and repair costs can be an expensive problem to deal with, deciding who should cover these costs can be a major task. In order to deal with this problem, some states have adopted what is known as modified comparative negligence law.

Under the modified comparative negligence system, unlike pure comparative laws, a person must be found as less negligent than the defendant in order to successfully file a claim. If carried into percentages, the plaintiff must be under 50 percent negligent in the case.

In terms of real-world scenarios and examples, modified systems would state that a person decidedly not majorly to blame may receive compensation, while the other party involved may not. Thus, if a car accident occurred because two cars rolled through a stop sign at the same time, the one determined to have less quantified fault in the accident could be rewarded compensation through a lawsuit.

While this is the case in many states, there is another form of modified comparative negligence that claims that a plaintiff must not have over 50 percent of the assigned negligence in the case. These may only seem like a difference in language, but these negligence systems can differ over cases in which the plaintiff is found equally at fault. Under the first, this would not be possible. Under the second, it would be.

With these differing forms of negligence compensation available, more people are allowed to get more realistic sums of money according to their respective roles in an accident. After all, it seems partly unfair that someone should cover the entire expense of a car accident if the plaintiff was not paying any attention to the road at the time. For more information about these systems of negligence determination, contact a personal injury attorney.

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Contact the Racine personal injury attorneys of Habush Habush & Rottier, S.C. today if you have been injured by another person's negligent behavior and need legal advice on what to do next.

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