If I’m partially at fault in a car accident in Arizona can I still collect on a claim? Kelly Law
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Phoenix personal injury attorney John Kelly answers a question about collecting on an insurance claim in Arizona even when partially at fault in this YouTube Live Event. Share your own questions in the comments section below or visit .
Joe – I was in a pretty good wreck with another car at an intersection in Phoenix. The police determined us both to be at fault for the accident and now I’m wondering if I am going to be out of pocket. Can I still file a claim even though I’ve been found partially at fault?
Kelly Law Team
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Phoenix, AZ 85004
602-283-4122
Full Transcript of content:
– We're with John Kelly. John is a personal injury attorney in Phoenix, Arizona and he's agreed to answer an online question. This one is particularly related to partial fault in a car accident. With that said, let's go into the question that was posted. It's from Joe. Joe said, "I was in a pretty good wreck with another car at an intersection in Phoenix. The police determined us both to be at fault for the accident and now I'm wondering if I'm going to be out of pocket? Can I still file a claim even though I've been found partially at fault?"
– That's good question John has. And it's pretty common to see that both party's have some fault in the accident. In Arizona, we can determine fault by a percentage because we can do comparative fault. So there may be a situation where one party is found to be 25% at fault, the other party 75%. It can go from 50/50. It can be 90%, 10%. Anywhere along the scale. So when the officer says both party's are at fault, he's not assigning a percentage like we would need to typically do in a personal injury claim. What we can do is go in afterwards and get the investigation done to try to tip the scales in favor of our client a little bit more. So we can find all the facts that are favorable to our situation to show that the other party was more at fault for the accident. Now, the other party is gonna have likely a personal injury attorney or at least an insurance adjuster working on the claim too to try to tip the scales the other way. So it's one of these things that kinda goes back and forth and we have exchange evidence until we come to some sort of agreement. Now if we do not come to an agreement, then it gets pushed towards trial. And ultimately a jury would decide what that percentage is. A judge would instruct them that they need to assess the percentages of fault in the accident. So, the idea at my firm is to get on top of it early and make sure that we're getting all the evidence that we have. Getting it over to the adjuster and making a claim that is gonna be favorable to our client. To try to tip the scales in favor of our client and get a better settlement. Now if there is some percentage of fault attributed to our client, it is gonna be a little bit more difficult to get a full recovery but even a partial recovery is gonna be better than nothing. So it's definitely worth pursuing still.
– Excellent. Well, if you have any follow-up questions for John, just post 'em in the comments section. Thanks for the answer John.
– Thank you Ryan. And you can reach out to me anytime at the Kelly Law Team. My phone number here is 602-283-4122.
– Thank you.