The spread of the comparative negligence rule in the United States

Abstract

In the sixteen years following 1968, thirty-seven states joined seven other states and most of the common law and statute law world in replacing the tort law principle of contributory negligence with comparative negligence. Contributory negligence absolves a negligent defendant of any financial responsibility for injuries occurring to a plaintiff if the plaintiff contributed in any manner to causing the accident. While there are exceptions to the rule, in general, under comparative negligence the courts use the degree of negligence of the parties to an accident to determine the percentage of the costs of the accidents each party will pay. Thus, a plaintiff whose actions are found to have contributed 25 percent of the cause of an accident will have his award reduced by 25 percent. Under the contributory negligence rule, he would receive nothing from the defendant. This rapid change in the kind of rule applied in tort law has not attracted much attention from researchers in law and economics. A majority of the literature has analyzed the relative efficiency of the various forms of tort law.’ Alternative questions