Legally reviewed by:
Setareh Law
January 9, 2024

California has adopted a generous understanding of comparative fault designed to help both accident victims and liable parties recover from their injuries. If you want to benefit from this system, you need to have some idea as to how much fault you may have contributed to your recent accident.

No one wants to believe that they may bear some liability for a recent crash, but the complicated nature of these accidents can make sharing fault inherent. Fortunately, you have experienced car accident lawyers on your side. Setareh Law can assess your circumstances to determine what fault, if any, you contributed to an accident before recommending an appropriate course of action.

Assigning Car Accident Fault in California

California operates on an interpretation of pure comparative fault that allows most parties involved in a car accident to pursue civil action regardless of how much fault they have allegedly contributed to an accident. This understanding specifically states that so long as a party has not 100% contributed to the accident, they may deserve compensation for their losses.

This understanding of pure comparative negligence applies to all personal injury cases in California. Parties interested in pursuing compensation for the losses can take their cases before a judge and have a jury decide what percentage of fault the prosecution contributed to their accident.

Parties partially responsible for their own accidents can still receive compensation. Even so, juries in California can reduce the compensation a liable party receives for their losses by the percentage of fault the acting party contributed to their own accident.

Evidence Establishes the Majority of Liability in an Accident

If you want to assign liability for an accident or divide liability between yourself and another party, you need to rely on the evidence available at the scene of your accident. You have an obligation to meet California’s burden of proof if you want to initiate civil proceedings against another party at all.

You can work with car accident attorneys in California to go back to your accident scene and investigate the negligence that led to your crash. This may mean looking over video footage of your accident, speaking with bystanders, or calling expert witnesses to contribute their testimony to your case.

Our team can help you determine which events may prove most relevant to your fight for fair compensation. Additionally, we can use the evidence at our disposal to determine how a jury may rule when dividing fault between yourself and another party. 

An Experienced Attorney Can Pre-Calculate Your Alleged Accident Fault

At the end of the day, a jury in civil court decides how much fault you allegedly contributed to a crash. You can get ahead of the jury’s assumptions by calculating your alleged fault alongside a car accident lawyer in California.

Our team can assess the circumstances that led to your accident and help you bring forward the evidence necessary to win the right to pursue a civil case. We can additionally bring forward the evidence needed to outline our own understanding of fault distribution.

When presenting that evidence in court, we can argue that your behavior had little to no impact on your accident. In doing so, we fight for your right to the most possible car accident compensation. 

Get in Touch With a California Car Accident Lawyer Today

Even if you contributed some fault to a recent car accident, California’s understanding of comparative negligence may still allow you to pursue lost-based compensation. You can schedule a free case consultation with our car accident attorneys throughout California to discuss your right to the financial support you deserve.

Our team can work together to anticipate the ways a liable party may attempt to throw your contributions to an accident into question. We can then prepare you and our available evidence to counter those claims. You can learn more about this process during a free initial case evaluation with our car accident attorneys in California. Call us today at (310) 659-1826 or online to schedule your first meeting with our experienced personal injury lawyers. We also speak Spanish.