The legal definition of negligence is the “failure to behave with the level of care that a reasonable person would have exercised under the same circumstances,” per Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute (LII).
Comparative negligence is a “tort principle used by the court to reduce the amount of damages that a plaintiff can recover in a negligence-based claim according to the degree of negligence each party contributed to the incident,” per LII.
What Are Negligence and Comparative Negligence In Layman’s Terms?
Negligence: Someone injured you by failing to do or not do something that someone else would have done in a similar situation.
Comparative negligence: This is a legal concept that decides whether someone can still recover compensation if they are partially negligent and how their negligence can affect what they recover. There are two types of comparative negligence laws and a contributory negligence law:
- Pure comparative negligence: You can recover compensation as long as you were not 100% at fault for the accident or injury.
- Modified comparative negligence: You can recover compensation if you contributed to the accident or injury, but there is a threshold you must remain under (50% or 51%, depending on the state).
- Pure contributory negligence: You can recover nothing if you contributed to the accident or injury.
These laws may be called something different in each state.
New York’s Comparative Negligence Law
New York’s comparative negligence law (CVP § 1411) is as follows:
“In any action to recover damages for personal injury, injury to property, or wrongful death, the culpable conduct attributable to the claimant or to the decedent, including contributory negligence or assumption of risk, shall not bar recovery, but the amount of damages otherwise recoverable shall be diminished in the proportion which the culpable conduct attributable to the claimant or decedent bears to the culpable conduct which caused the damages.”
New York follows a pure comparative negligence law, which means someone can contribute to an accident or injury and still recover compensation as long as they are not entirely at fault. However, their percentage of fault will decrease their recoverable compensation.
