Texas Comparative Negligence Laws

Being partly at fault for a Texas crash does not end your injury claim. Texas comparative negligence laws only cut off your right to recover if your own share of the blame is greater than 50%.

Section 33.001 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code sets that bar. It applies statewide. Below that line, Section 33.012 cuts your damages by your share of the fault.

What Texas Comparative Negligence Law Actually Says

Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule, which the statute calls proportionate responsibility, because some fault does not bar your claim on its own. Fault is split into shares, and in any tort claim, those shares can go to a defendant, a settling person (someone who has already paid or promised to pay the claimant), or a responsible third party.

This rule covers any tort cause of action, including an ordinary crash claim. Under Section 33.003, the trier of fact, usually the jury, assigns a percentage of responsibility to: 

• Each claimant, meaning anyone seeking damages, including you
• Each defendant
• Each settling person
• Each responsible third party designated under Section 33.004

Can You Still Recover Money if You Were Partly at Fault?

Yes. If your share of responsibility is 50% or less, you can still recover damages, just reduced by your own percentage of fault. Any share above that bars the claim entirely, since the statute’s dividing line is a share greater than 50%, not a specific whole number.

Here is an illustration, not a real case or a prediction. If the damages found came to $100,000 and your share was 20%, the reduction leaves $80,000.

How Is Your Percentage of Fault Decided?

A jury, not an insurance adjuster, sets the percentages. The jury assigns each party a whole-number percentage of responsibility for causing or contributing to the harm, under that same allocation rule.

An adjuster’s fault number is a bargaining chip, not the split the law sets. Keep what pins down the details:

• The crash report number
• Photographs
• Witness names

That same statute also means a specific fault theory only reaches the jury if there’s enough evidence behind it. Separately, a party can move to strike a responsible third party’s designation (the one mentioned earlier in the bulleted list) after adequate time for discovery, on the ground that no evidence shows that person is responsible for any portion of the claimant’s injury.

What Counts as “Responsibility” Besides Careless Driving?

Responsibility is broader than careless driving. The jury can assign it for causing or contributing to the harm through any of these routes, or a combination of them:

• A negligent act or omission
• A defective or unreasonably dangerous product
• Other conduct or activity that violates an applicable legal standard

What if More Than One Driver Shares the Blame?

When several parties share the blame, the damages get split too. Each liable defendant owes only the share that matches its own percentage of responsibility. A defendant becomes jointly and severally liable for the whole recoverable amount only if its percentage is greater than 50%.

Section 33.013 defines jointly and severally liable as on the hook for the whole amount, not one slice.

The allocation runs in this order:

• Your own percentage comes off the damages first.
• Each liable defendant owes only its own percentage of the damages found.
• Above that 50% threshold, a defendant is also on the hook for the whole amount, not just its own share.

So a defendant with a small share does not have to cover a co-defendant who cannot pay.

Separately, a defendant may designate a responsible third party through a motion for leave, even someone you never sued. That third party then gets a share of the fault, and everyone else’s share shrinks.

How Does Settling With One Driver Change What You Collect?

Settling with one responsible party cuts what you can recover from everyone else, not just by removing that party from the case. The table below shows how the reduction works: it subtracts the total dollar amount of all settlements, not that party’s fault percentage.

The table above also reflects the order these apply in: your own share comes off first, then settlement dollars.

Section 33.011 defines a settling person as anyone who has paid or promised money or anything of monetary value to a claimant. The payment is made because the payer might otherwise be held liable.

Talk to Breeland Injury Law About Texas Comparative Negligence Laws

Your share of the fault decides how much of your losses you can recover under Texas comparative negligence laws. We can look at how your crash happened and what that means for your share.

Our injury team can walk through the fault questions in your case. Learn more about Breeland Injury Law, or contact us at 512-764-3380 to talk through what happened.