No bar, no matter how high your fault
Under Miss. Code § 11-7-15, "contributory negligence shall not bar recovery" — instead, any damages awarded are simply diminished by the jury in proportion to the negligence attributable to the injured person. There is no percentage threshold at all. A claimant found 90% at fault still recovers 10% of their total damages; a claimant found 99% at fault still recovers 1%.
One of the oldest laws of its kind in the country
Mississippi was among the earliest states in the nation to adopt comparative negligence, passing a broad statute in 1910 that applied to all types of negligence actions — making § 11-7-15's lineage genuinely one of the oldest of its kind nationally, well over a century old at this point.
Worked example
Someone with $100,000 in damages, found 30% at fault, recovers $70,000. That same person, found 70% at fault, still recovers $30,000. Even found 99% at fault, that same person recovers $1,000 — a genuinely meaningful difference from a modified comparative state, where crossing a 50% or 51% threshold would reduce that same claimant's recovery to zero.
A specific, protective carve-out: seat belt non-use
Mississippi law includes a distinctive protection worth knowing: under Miss. Code § 63-2-3, a claimant's failure to wear a seat belt cannot be used as evidence of contributory or comparative negligence in a Mississippi personal injury case, regardless of how that failure might otherwise have affected the severity of the injuries.
A cap worth knowing about non-economic damages
Separately from the comparative negligence analysis, non-economic damages — pain, suffering, and diminished quality of life — are generally capped at $1,000,000 in most Mississippi personal injury cases under Miss. Code § 11-1-60(2)(b), a limit that applies regardless of the fault percentages involved.