Partial Fault Pedestrian Accident

Answer:

Sometimes people think that just because they were pedestrians when they were in an accident that the car is always at fault.

When it comes to determining fault in accidents, Utah law applies a legal doctrine called comparative negligence. Comparative negligence means that any time there’s a claim or a lawsuit, anybody involved can have their respective amounts of fault compared to anybody else that was involved.

This can may seem complicated, but it really isn’t. What it means is, if a pedestrian does something wrong, his fault can be compared to the driver of the car. If a pedestrian is in the middle of a dark road wearing black clothes far away from a crosswalk, in some circumstances, that pedestrian could be more at fault for the crash than the car was.

In Utah’s comparative negligence, you need to be less than 50% at fault to recover from the person in the car. Our job as your lawyer is to do everything we can to minimize any liability that you might have so that we can get a recovery for you from the insurance company.

If you have any questions about whether you share fault in an auto pedestrian case, please give me a call. Let me talk through it with you. It’s always free to talk.