7. What is comparative negligence?

Comparative Negligence comes into play when both parties have failed to reach the ordinary reasonable person standard. For example, one person was driving too fast in a patch of dense fog on the highway and the person whom he hit with his car failed to have his vehicle lights on. In a situation where each party has some degree of negligence in causing an accident, the responsibility to the other person is reduced by one's own degree of negligence. In the example provided, the party traveling too fast for the conditions may be determined to bear 60% of the negligence and the party driving without his vehicle lights on determined to bear 40% of the negligence. If the second person driving without vehicle lights would have recovered $10,000, his recovery is reduced to $6,000 because of his 40% contributory negligence.

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