Pure comparative negligence, as a rule
Under A.R.S. § 12-2505, enacted through the Uniform Contribution Among Tortfeasors Act in 1984, Arizona applies a pure comparative negligence standard: if the jury finds the claimant partly at fault, the claimant's action is not barred, but their full damages are reduced in proportion to their own relative degree of fault. A claimant found 60% at fault still recovers the remaining 40% of their damages.
The real exception: willful or wanton conduct by the claimant
Here's where Arizona genuinely diverges from most other pure comparative states. The same statute specifies directly: "there is no right to comparative negligence in favor of any claimant who has intentionally, wilfully or wantonly caused or contributed to the injury or wrongful death." In practical terms, if a claimant's own conduct rises to this level, they lose the benefit of comparative negligence entirely — their claim instead falls back under the older, all-or-nothing logic of contributory negligence, where that specific conduct can bar recovery outright rather than merely reducing it.
A genuinely asymmetric rule, confirmed by real case law
This exception cuts only one way. Arizona courts have held that a defendant whose conduct was willful or wanton still gets the full benefit of comparative negligence — the exception applies only to a willful or wanton claimant, not a willful or wanton defendant. In Lerma v. Keck (Ariz. Ct. App. 1996), the court confirmed this asymmetric treatment does not violate equal protection or amount to unconstitutional special legislation, even though a similarly culpable defendant and claimant end up treated quite differently under the statute.
A unique constitutional wrinkle
Arizona's approach to this question is shaped by a genuinely distinctive state constitutional provision. Article 18, Section 5 of the Arizona Constitution requires that the defense of contributory negligence or assumption of risk "shall, in all cases whatsoever, be a question of fact and shall, at all times, be left to the jury." Because of this guarantee, the Arizona Supreme Court held in Bauer v. Crotty (1991) that a jury cannot simply be instructed it must return a verdict against a plaintiff for willful or wanton conduct — that would effectively decide the question as a matter of law, in tension with the constitutional jury-question guarantee. The Court later clarified in Williams v. Thude (1997) that juries should instead be told they may deal with the plaintiff's conduct as they see fit — keeping the ultimate call genuinely in the jury's hands, exactly as the state constitution requires.
Why this matters for a real claim
Because losing comparative-negligence protection can be far more consequential than an ordinary fault-percentage dispute, insurers in Arizona have a real incentive to argue that a claimant's own conduct crossed the line from ordinary negligence into willful or wanton territory. See our guide to how adjusters build a fault argument in Arizona for what that looks like in practice.