A real but minority approach
Most US states use some form of modified comparative negligence — one that bars recovery once a claimant's own fault crosses a 50% or 51% threshold. Pure comparative negligence, the rule California follows, takes that threshold away entirely. Thirteen states share this approach: Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Washington.
A mix of large and small states
This group is a genuinely varied mix — it includes some of the most populous states in the country, like California, New York, and Florida, right alongside much smaller states like Alaska and Rhode Island. Pure comparative negligence isn't tied to any particular region or state size; it's simply the fault-allocation approach each of these states, through their own courts or legislatures, chose to adopt.
California's real point of difference within this group
It's worth being precise here: while the core outcome California shares with its twelve peer states is identical — proportional reduction, never a bar — the source of California's rule is genuinely unusual. Most of these states eventually had their legislature formally codify comparative negligence by statute, sometimes years after a court first adopted the concept. California's legislature never has. More than fifty years after Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975), the entire California system still rests on that single judicial decision.
The contrast worth understanding
At the opposite end of the spectrum sit the five contributory negligence jurisdictions — Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and the District of Columbia — where any fault at all on a claimant's part can bar recovery completely. A claimant with identical facts and an identical degree of fault could recover a substantial portion of their damages in California and recover nothing at all in one of those five jurisdictions.
Why this matters in a disputed claim
Because none of these thirteen states has a threshold that can eliminate a claim over fault alone, a disputed fault percentage in California changes the size of the recovery, but it never becomes the entire case the way it would in a modified comparative or contributory negligence jurisdiction. See our full comparison of how California's rule fits among all four fault systems for the complete picture.