You were following the rules of the road, but maybe you were driving a few miles over the speed limit when another driver ran a red light and hit your vehicle. Now the insurance company is pointing at your speedometer and arguing that you share the blame. Many accident victims assume that any degree of shared fault disqualifies them from recovering compensation, and that misconception costs injured people real money every year.
Byrd Davis Alden & Henrichson, LLP has been guiding injured Texans through complex liability disputes since 1959. As Austin’s oldest personal injury law firm with Board Certified trial attorneys, we know how insurance companies use partial fault allegations to reduce what they owe. If you have been told your own actions contributed to your accident, you still have legal options worth exploring.
Texas Follows a Modified Comparative Fault Rule
Texas uses a legal framework known as proportionate responsibility, codified in Chapter 33 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code. Under this system, each party involved in an accident is assigned a percentage of fault based on their contribution to the incident. As the Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute explains, most states use some form of modified comparative negligence, and Texas falls squarely within this category. The critical threshold in Texas is 51 percent. If you are found to be 50 percent or less at fault, you can still recover compensation. If your share of responsibility exceeds 50 percent, you are barred from recovering any damages.
How Your Compensation Is Calculated
Your total recovery is reduced by whatever percentage of fault is assigned to you. If a jury determines your total damages amount to $200,000 and you were 20 percent responsible for the crash, your award would be reduced to $160,000. If you were 45 percent at fault, you would recover $110,000. That single percentage point between 50 and 51 percent represents a hard line in Texas law, which is why the fight over fault percentages is often the most fiercely contested part of a personal injury case.
How Insurance Companies Use Partial Fault Against You
Insurance adjusters are trained to look for any detail suggesting you contributed to the accident. They scrutinize your speed, your lane position, whether you wore a seatbelt, and even whether your brake lights worked. In many cases, they inflate your share of responsibility far beyond what the evidence supports, hoping you will accept a reduced settlement rather than challenge their assessment. This strategy is especially effective against unrepresented claimants who do not realize they have the right to dispute the insurer’s fault allocation.
Proving negligence requires a detailed investigation, and the same is true for defending against inflated fault claims. Our attorneys gather police reports, surveillance footage, witness statements, and accident reconstruction analysis to establish what happened and challenge any attempt to shift an unfair share of blame onto you.
Shared Fault in Cases Involving Multiple Parties
Accidents frequently involve more than two parties, and Texas law allows fault to be distributed among all responsible individuals and entities. In a claim involving multiple parties, a jury assigns a separate percentage of fault to each one, and those percentages must total 100 percent. Defendants often try to point the finger at other parties, including parties who are not part of the lawsuit, to dilute their own share of responsibility. Our legal team identifies every liable party and works to minimize your assigned share of fault while the true cause of the accident is brought to light.
Understanding the interplay between fault percentages and economic and non-economic damages available under Texas law is essential to evaluating your claim accurately. Even with a meaningful share of fault assigned to you, the compensation you recover for medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering can still be significant.
Contact Byrd Davis Alden & Henrichson, LLP After Your Accident
Being partially at fault for an accident does not mean you forfeit your right to compensation in Texas. It means you need an attorney who understands how to fight the fault battle and keep your percentage as low as the evidence supports. With over 65 years of experience, over $100 million recovered, and recognition from U.S. News & World Report as one of the Best Law Firms in the country, we have the skills and resources to protect your claim from start to finish.
If you were injured in an accident and have been told you share some of the blame, contact our team today for a free consultation. We will review the facts of your case, challenge any unfair fault allegations, and fight to secure every dollar of compensation you are entitled to under Texas law.
