What You Should Know About Georgia Laws and Personal Injury

Comparative Fault Laws & Georgia

Sometimes, when you file an injury suit or an insurance claim the other party will turn around and claim that you are the one who is at fault for the accident.

Depending on if you are found in whole or in part at fault for the accident will decide how much compensation you will be owed once the case is resolved.

In other words, Georgia’s modified comparative fault rule reduces or can even eliminate damages if you’re found to be partly or mostly at fault for an accident. Here is an example:

Let’s say you were going through an intersection and you were hit by a driver who ran a red light.

On your vehicle, your left headlight was out, and the accident happened after dusk, the driver that illegally ran the light could claim the faulty headlight was a partial cause of the accident.

It’s finally determined that the other driver was found 90 percent at fault for the accident, and you were 10 percent at fault.

Georgia’s modified comparative fault rule reduces your damages by an amount that is equal to the percent of fault assigned to you. Here, if your damages equal $10,000, you’ll receive $9,000, or $10,000 minus $1,000 representing the 10 percent of fault assigned to you.   

In the state of Georgia, when both parties are found at fault, the law requires the court to apply the comparative fault rule in injury cases. Likewise, it’s not uncommon for this rule to be applied by insurance companies in settlement negotiations.