If You Were Partly at Fault in a California Car Accident

Insurance adjusters like a simple story in which you caused your own crash. Under California law, that story does not have to be all or nothing. You can be partly responsible and still have a car accident claim for the share of harm you did not cause.

This is general information, not a prediction of the percentage in your crash.

California compares fault instead of barring the claim

In Li v. Yellow Cab Co., the California Supreme Court adopted pure comparative negligence. Each person is responsible for the percentage of the harm attributed to them. If a jury finds you 20 percent at fault and the other driver 80 percent, your damages are reduced by 20 percent. They are not erased.

Pure comparative fault also means a recovery is still possible when your share is the larger one. A person found 70 percent at fault can still recover 30 percent of their damages from the other responsible parties. Whether that remainder is worth pursuing depends on the injuries, the insurance, and the cost of proving the case. It is not a reason to accept an adjuster’s opening line that “you were partly at fault, so we owe nothing.”

The percentage is applied to the damages that are proved: medical bills, wage loss, and the human harm of pain and lost function. A fight about fault and a fight about the value of the injury happen at the same time. Giving away fault in a recorded statement makes the damages discussion smaller before it starts.

How an adjuster picks a number

The other driver’s insurer assigns fault to pay as little as its policy and its evaluation guidelines allow. The number often appears in the first call: 50 percent because both drivers were moving, or 20 percent because you were a few miles over the limit, or 100 percent because the police report listed a contributing factor next to your name.

A traffic citation and a police report are evidence. They are not the verdict. Officers write what they see after the fact, sometimes without speaking to every witness. In Anaheim and Irvine, intersection crashes often turn on signal timing, sight lines, and which driver entered on a protected arrow. Those facts come from cameras, the signal plan, and the people who were there — not from a percentage an adjuster needs in order to close a file.

Your own insurer can raise a comparative-fault argument too, including on an uninsured or underinsured motorist claim. The duty to cooperate with your carrier is real. The duty to guess yourself into a bad percentage is not.

Patterns that get argued in both directions

A few crash types produce the same fight over and over:

• Rear-end collisions. The following driver is usually primarily at fault for failing to leave enough room. A lead driver who stops without working brake lights, or a middle car shoved into you by a third vehicle, changes the split. “I was hit from behind” is the start of the investigation, not the end.
• Left turns. A driver turning left across oncoming traffic must yield. The oncoming driver can still share fault for speed or for running a light. Both statements can be true.
• Lane changes. The driver who moves over without clearing the lane is often primarily at fault. The other driver can share fault if they were accelerating into the space or riding in a blind spot without room.
• Parking-lot and driveway crashes. Low speed does not mean low fault complexity. Right-of-way rules still apply, and insurers often split these files down the middle because the damage to the cars looks modest. Injury claims should not be priced that way when a person is hurt.

A motorcycle rider hears a version of the same argument: that lane position, speed, or the decision to ride at all was the cause. California compares the riders’ and drivers’ actual conduct. It does not treat the more vulnerable road user as automatically at fault.

What you say becomes the percentage

Comparative fault is where roadside conversation does the most damage. “I’m sorry” and “I never saw you” read, later, as admissions. So does a guess about your speed or about how many seconds the light had been yellow.

Tell the officer the lane you were in, the direction you were traveling, and what you observed. Say you are not sure when you are not sure. Get medical care the same day, because an argument that you were “not really hurt” is the adjuster’s companion to an argument that you were partly at fault. The scene photographs, witness names, and repair estimates described in our after-an-accident checklist are what a comparative-fault defense has to answer.

Do not give the other insurer a recorded statement in which they walk you through their percentage. Those questions are drafted to lock you into a version that favors their driver.

Several people can share the same crash

Fault is not always a two-person split. A trucking company, a rideshare period of coverage, or a public entity that maintained a dangerous signal or roadway can carry a share. Each defendant’s percentage, and each insurance policy, has to be identified before you agree that one driver “was only a little bit responsible.”

California also limits how non-economic damages — pain, not medical bills — are collected among defendants. Economic losses and human losses are not always divided the same way. That is a reason to have the percentages and the policies mapped before you sign a release that names only one driver and leaves the rest of the harm unpaid.

Nordean Law builds the liability case from the evidence, not from the first percentage an adjuster offers. If the offer assumes you caused more of the crash than the facts support, the file is prepared for a jury that can set the number itself.

An insurer already told you the crash was partly your fault? Contact Nordean Law or call 888.254.3222. The consultation is free, and you pay nothing unless we win.

This article is general information, not legal advice. The percentage of fault depends on the evidence in your crash.