Experiencing a car accident is painful and traumatic. In a fault-based accident state like Missouri, it also leaves surviving injury victims with a common question: “Can I still recover compensation if I was partly at fault for the accident?”
Under Missouri 537.765, the law states the following:
“Contributory fault as complete bar to plaintiff’s recovery abolished — doctrine of comparative fault to apply — fault of plaintiff an affirmative defense to diminish damages …”
In other words, a car accident victim may still recover a portion of their total damages if they contributed to the cause of the accident, but the insurance company subtracts the injury victim’s percentage of fault from the amount they pay on the claim.
Understanding Pure Comparative Negligence In Missouri
Missouri is not one of the handful of no-fault car accident states that require an accident victim to file a claim against their own personal injury protection insurance regardless of who caused the accident. Instead, Missouri has a pure comparative negligence system.
Under this rule, the insurance companies involved assign adjusters to investigate the accident and determine each driver’s percentage of fault. In theory, under a pure comparative negligence system, even if you were 99% at fault, you could still file a claim for 1% of your total compensation. However, typical cases in Missouri are more like the following: Suppose one driver rolls through a stop sign and hits a vehicle already in the intersection.
You might consider the driver who ran the stop sign completely responsible. But what if the insurance adjuster discovers that the other driver in the intersection was exceeding the speed limit, didn’t have their lights on, and it was raining? They could determine that the driver who ran the stop sign was 75% at fault and the other driver 25%. If the driver in the intersection sustained $100,000 in damages, they could still recover $75,000.
What If the Insurance Company Says I Was Partly at Fault for an Accident, but I Wasn’t?
The pure comparative negligence system is beneficial for drivers who truly contributed to the cause of their accident and injuries because they can still recover a portion of their damages. Unfortunately, this system incentivizes insurers to assign fault to injury victims to reduce the amount they must pay on the claim, thereby protecting their bottom line. In some cases, they do this by assigning an undue percentage of fault to an injury victim with a substantial claim.
For this reason, hiring a St. Louis car accident attorney can help. An attorney represents their client’s best interests throughout the process, beginning with launching an independent investigation to compile evidence of the at-fault party’s negligence and liability for damages. An attorney protects their client from being assigned an unfair or unreasonable percentage of fault.
What If Other Factors Were at Play In a Car Accident Case?
Under Missouri’s pure comparative negligence system, a car accident attorney pursues all available avenues for compensating their client. In some cases, they could determine that a third party contributed to the accident or the severity of the injury and then recover additional compensation from that third party.
Common third parties in car accident claims include negligent road maintenance agencies, road planning agencies that created poorly designed intersections, and manufacturers of defective airbags or seatbelts. Third-party drivers also sometimes share liability in car accident cases.