comparative neg. on a question of lights

[mark wallach]

b]I am trying to get someone's opinion for liability in new york city, new york state on the findings of liability when both party's claim they each had the right of way.What constitutes a degree of neg, such as 50/50 failing both party's or awarding anything to either party's [/b]

[Sundheim, Esq.]

I am an attorney with just shy of 25 years experience with a focus on defense of all sorts of injury cases. NY law lets the jury apportion by percentage, the amount of fault (negligence) in a situation such as you are describing. Often both parties in an auto accident with 2 cars claim the other was at fault - asserting for instance, that each had the green light in an intersection car collision. Issues of truthfulness are ones the court often can't rule on as legal questions - rather they are factual questions and the jury listens to the witnesses; maybe sees some photos of the accident location and/or photos and records of how each car was seen to display damage, and then decides what they think happened. A jury can decide negligence was 50-50. Damages are figured out and if the plaintiff was only able to prove the defendant was 50% at fault, the damages will be half what the actual amount otherwise would have been. E.g. - a million dollar injury will be reduced due to the verdict to $500,000 if the defendant was only 50% at fault and plaintiff was 50% at fault. The law gets a bit more tricky in that "non economic" damages (i.e. - pain and suffering) will be limited if plaintiff was 51% or more responsible for his/her own accident. The rules for negligence are also not quite the same for a car accident than for some other kinds. Please feel free to contact me in the event you have further questions etc. at SSundheim@JonesGarneau.com.