Missouri is an At-Fault State. What does that mean for you?

Missouri is an at-fault state for auto accident claims. This means that the driver responsible for causing the accident must pay for damages. If both drivers are deemed to share fault, then under Missouri’s “pure comparative fault” system, the claims are settled in accordance with the percent of fault they are found to have.?

For example:

In Missouri, if you are involved in an accident and are found to share 15% of the responsibility for it, that will mean that if you are awarded $100,000 in damages, you would only receive $85,000 of that, since your at-fault portion (in this case 15% of $100,000 = $15,000) would be subtracted from your settlement.?

Immediate actions

In order to protect yourself when involved in an accident, there are several things you should immediately consider doing to make it easy for your attorney to build a case for you not being at fault:

1. Call law enforcement. This will have the benefit of securing the scene and protecting you all from danger, while also having an eye witness there to secure evidence and take witness statements.?
2. Get on-scene proof as covered below.
3. Be careful what you say. Saying something as harmless as “my fault” or “so sorry about that” to the individual, or “I just didn’t see them” to the officer, can result in the insurance adjustor assigning you more fault and thus, less compensation.
4. Take your car to be thoroughly inspected for damage, and let them know exactly what happened. It is common for small cracks to form as a result of even minor accidents, which go unnoticed until they expand and turn into major malfunctions.

Doing these will significantly help your case success by providing evidence to show that you were not the one at fault. The more evidence you have, the better your attorney will be able to build a strong case that gets you compensated.

Get on-scene proof

The insurance adjuster who will be determining who is at fault and what percentage of fault each party is will likely never visit the scene of your accident. They will construct fault based on what is said to them and any reports or media they have access to. They will attempt to recreate what happened from the location and severity of the damages, and will then assign blame based on their findings. The more you can document with pictures and video, the more accurate their understanding of what happened will be. If you do not want to have the designation of who is at fault or your award for damages left up to chance, try as much as possible to do the following immediately after being rear-ended:

• Get the other driver’s name, telephone number, insurance provider, and policy number
• Gather the other driver’s license plate number and which state their car is registered in
• Take photos and video of the scene of the accident, including getting the intersection or streets
• Capture multiple angles of any debris and damages to the vehicles both inside and out in photos and video, as well as tire marks and car positioning
• Record yourself giving an account of what happened to reference later

Getting medical proof

Immediately after being involved in a car accident, you should consult a medical provider. The reason for this is that your case will be built around damages to your physical property and your person. If you take pictures and video of the scene, the physical damages will be easy to assess, however the damages to your person tend to be disputed more often. By going to a physician as soon as possible, and then continuing to go to that physician regularly, you are avoiding having “gaps in care” and are creating a paper trail.?

If symptoms develop several weeks after the accident, as they sometimes do, it can be very difficult to prove their origin after-the-fact. If there are doctor's records and a history of x-rays, scans, and physician conversations about worsening symptoms, or unknown issues that are later found to be linked to issues, it paints a very clear picture of how the accident impacted the victim. Without those, an insurance adjustor or court could find that the injuries could have been caused by unknown or unrelated issues that have happened since.

For more information on how Liberty Trial Law Group can help you or someone you know in case of an auto accident, send me a message or reach out to our team.