Four systems, and Maryland uses the strictest one
American fault law splits into four real categories: pure comparative negligence, modified comparative negligence with a 50% bar, modified comparative negligence with a 51% bar, and pure contributory negligence. Maryland uses pure contributory negligence — the strictest, least claimant-friendly of the four, and a genuine outlier among them.
A difference of kind, not just degree
Every form of comparative negligence, no matter how strict, involves a percentage somewhere in the analysis — a reduction, a threshold, or both. Contributory negligence has no percentage at all. It asks a single binary question: was the claimant at fault to any degree? A yes, at any level, ends the claim entirely. This makes contributory negligence a fundamentally different kind of system, not simply comparative negligence with a stricter number attached.
Even the strictest comparative states are more forgiving
It's worth being concrete about the gap here. Even in a 50%-bar comparative negligence state — already the stricter of the two modified thresholds — a claimant at 40% or 45% fault still recovers a meaningful, reduced amount. In Maryland, that same claimant, or even one at just 5% fault, recovers nothing whatsoever.
The older rule that most states left behind
Contributory negligence is, historically, the original common-law default — the rule virtually every American state applied at one point. Over the course of the 20th century, the overwhelming majority of states gradually replaced it with some form of comparative negligence, viewing the all-or-nothing outcome as too harsh. Maryland is one of a small handful of jurisdictions that never made that shift.
Why Maryland still has it
Maryland's highest court has been directly asked to judicially abandon contributory negligence and declined, holding that such a significant change belongs with the legislature rather than the courts. Legislative efforts to enact comparative negligence by statute have likewise not succeeded. See our guide to the other states that still use this rule for Maryland's small, distinctive peer group.