Utah Comparative Negligence: The 50% Bar Rule Explained

Under Utah’s comparative negligence rule, you can still recover money after an accident even if you were partly to blame, but only if your share of the fault is less than 50 percent, and whatever damages you prove get reduced by whatever percentage of fault the jury assigns to you. The threshold comes from Utah Code 78B-5-818, and it governs car crashes, slip-and-fall injuries, wrongful death claims, and almost every other negligence case filed in the state.¹

The 50 Percent Bar

The statute lets you recover only when the combined fault of the defendants (together with any nonparties and immune persons who get fault assigned to them) exceeds your own fault.¹ That word does the work. At 49 percent fault with the other side at 51, you still have a case. At exactly 50 percent, the other side’s fault no longer exceeds yours, and your claim is gone.

Being partly responsible, by itself, doesn’t disqualify you. The statute makes that explicit.¹ That’s why so much of the real fight in a Utah injury case is about percentages. Defense lawyers push to move your number to 50 or above because it ends the claim. Your side pushes to keep it below.

How Your Damages Get Reduced

Once you clear the bar, the arithmetic is simple. Your proven damages drop by your fault percentage. A jury that finds $100,000 in medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering, with you 20 percent at fault, caps your recovery at $80,000.

The reduction hits everything. Medical expenses, lost income, property damage, and non-economic losses like pain and suffering all come down by the same percentage. Nothing is shielded. If you’re 30 percent at fault, 30 percent comes off the top of every category, which is why the fault number matters as much as the damages number.

Each Defendant Pays Only Their Share

Utah has done away with joint and several liability for most defendants. Under Section 78B-5-819, each defendant’s liability is “several only and not joint,” so every defendant pays only the portion of damages matching their own percentage of fault.² A defendant found 15 percent responsible owes 15 percent, no matter who else is in the case or what they owe. And defendants cannot sue each other for contribution to cover a share; Section 78B-5-820 blocks that outright.³

When a Defendant Can’t Pay

There’s a wrinkle most people don’t expect. If a defendant can’t actually pay their share of the judgment, the court reallocates the uncollectible amount to the remaining parties in proportion to their fault.² A defendant originally pegged at 10 percent could end up paying more if the main wrongdoer turns out to be uninsured or judgment-proof. The reallocation runs across every solvent party, and that includes you as the plaintiff. In practical terms, part of what you can’t collect from an empty defendant becomes money you absorb.

One exception: fault assigned to a nonparty who settled with you before trial stays locked in place and cannot be shifted to anyone else.²

Fault Assigned to People Not in the Lawsuit

Utah lets the fact finder assign fault to people who aren’t defendants. When any party asks, the jury or judge must assign a percentage to each nonparty and each person immune from suit when there’s a factual and legal basis for it.¹ It’s a standard defense move: point at someone who already settled, or at a government employee with immunity, and argue they caused most of the harm.

Fault put on an immune person doesn’t create any liability for that person; it just makes the remaining shares add up more accurately.¹ The problem is the effect on you. If a jury puts 30 percent on an immune nonparty, nobody at the table is paying that 30 percent, and it effectively disappears from your recovery. That makes early decisions about whom to sue, and how to handle settlements with some defendants but not others, central to protecting the final number.

How the Percentages Actually Get Decided

At trial, the jury (or the judge in a bench trial) weighs the evidence and assigns a specific percentage to every party and nonparty, based on how much each one’s conduct contributed to the injuries. Insurance adjusters run essentially the same analysis when they evaluate claims and put out settlement offers before any lawsuit is filed.

What drives the percentages depends on the case. In vehicle collisions, it’s typically the police report and any citations, physical evidence like damage patterns and skid marks, dashcam or surveillance video, and witness statements. Accident reconstruction experts sometimes come in to analyze speed, impact angles, and reaction times. In premises liability cases, the focus tends to shift to maintenance records, inspection logs, and whether a hazard was marked or visible. The strength of this evidence is what ultimately moves the fault number up or down, which is why preserving documentation early matters more than people realize.

Wrongful Death Cases Follow the Same Rule

The comparative negligence framework applies to wrongful death claims. Section 78B-5-819 lists wrongful death alongside personal injury and property damage as the claims these rules govern.² If the person who died was partly at fault, that fault cuts the surviving family’s recovery the same way it would cut a living plaintiff’s award. If the deceased person’s share reaches 50 percent or more, the claim is barred under the same threshold that applies elsewhere.¹

That puts families in a hard spot. The person whose conduct is on trial can no longer speak to it, and defendants have every reason to push as much fault onto the decedent as the evidence will bear. Gathering evidence quickly after a fatal accident is what protects the claim at the fault allocation stage.

Filing Deadlines

None of this helps if you miss the deadline to file. Utah generally allows four years for a personal injury lawsuit. Wrongful death claims have to be filed within two years of the date of death. Claims against the state or a political subdivision also carry a two-year deadline. Property damage claims from motor vehicle accidents run on a four-year clock. These deadlines are strict. Missing one ends your right to sue, no matter how strong the case would have been on the merits.

1
Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-5-818 – Comparative Negligence
2
Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-5-819 – Comparative Negligence
3
Utah Legislature. Utah Code 78B-5-820 – Amount of Liability Limited to Proportion of Fault – No Contribution