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What happens if you are partially at fault for causing your accident? Can you still recover
compensation in New York? Would you like to learn the answer? Come join me, I’ll tell
you exactly what will happen. Hi. I’m Gerry Oginski. I’m a New York medical malpractice
and personal injury trial attorney practicing law here in the state of New York. The short
answer is you can still recover compensation. The long answer is whatever you are able to
recover is going to be reduced by the amount that you are going to be held responsible
for causing your accident. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you’re in a car,
you’re driving down the street, you’re involved in an intersection collision. And
now it turns out that witnesses have said that you went through the intersection whether
there was a stoplight, whether there was a stop sign and maybe you just didn’t see
it. Well at the same time maybe the other driver didn’t recognize and see anybody
coming and maybe they also contributed, so now you’re 50/50 responsible. You’re half
responsible, the other driver is also 50% responsible because neither of you were paying
attention, neither of you were looking to see exactly what stop signs or regulations
you had, and as a result you were both involved in the accident. Unfortunately, you were the
only one who was injured and now you’ve brought a lawsuit seeking to be compensated.
So here’s what occurs. At the time of trial, what will happen is a jury will have to determine
liability. They’ll have to determine who’s at fault and in an intersection collision
where there’s just 2 cars, they will have to apportion liability to divide up who’s
responsible based upon the facts of the case. And the jury has to come to a total of 100%.
Is the other driver of the car 50% responsible? Are you 50% responsible? Is somebody 70%,
the other 30%? Whatever the apportionment is the total has to be 100%. So let’s say
for example that you are 50% responsible for your accident. And now in the next phase of
the case, a jury determines that you are in fact entitled to receive compensation. And
let’s say for our purposes you’re entitled to receive $100,000 dollars according to the
jury. Well what will happen is even though the jury awards you $100,000 dollars for your
injuries – for your pain and your suffering – you will never be able to get that $100,000
dollars. Why not? Because you were partially responsible for your own accident. And as
a result of that, that reward is going to be reduced by the proportion – by the share
of liability – for which you caused or contributed to your own accident. And in this particular
example, 50% of $100,000 dollars means that you will only be able to recover a maximum
of $50,000 dollars. So that just gives you an idea into the answer of the question that
you asked, can you still bring a lawsuit and obtain compensation if you are partially responsible
for your own incident? The answer is, yes you can. But the amount that you can ultimately
recover is going to be reduced by the percentage of your own fault. So I hope this answered
your question and chances are you have more questions and concerns, that’s why you’re
watching this video. And if your matter happened here in the state of New York, what I encourage
you to do - pick up the phone and call me. I answer questions like yours every single
day. You can reach me at 516-487-8207 or by email at lawmed10@yahoo.com. I’m Gerry Oginski,
here in New York. Thanks so much for watching.