a doctrine of common law that if a person was injured in part due to his/her own
negligence (his/her negligence "contributed" to the accident), the injured party
would not be entitled to collect any damages (money) from another party who supposedly
caused the accident. Under this rule, a badly injured person who was only slightly
negligent could not win in court against a very negligent defendant. If Joe Tosspot
was driving drunk and speeding and Angela Comfort was going 25 m. p. h. but six
inches over the center-line, most likely Angela would be precluded from any recovery
(receiving any money for injuries or damages) from a car crash. The possible unfair
results have led some juries to ignore the rule and, in the past few decades, most
states have adopted a comparative negligence test in which the relative percentages
of negligence by each person are used to determine damage recovery (how much money
would be paid to the injured person).
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