Oregon's rule: barred only when you exceed the other side
Under ORS § 31.600, if a plaintiff is found to be more than 50% at fault for their own injury, recovery is barred entirely. Below that threshold, damages are reduced proportionally by the plaintiff's own percentage of fault.
A genuinely distinctive detail: settling defendants still count
Oregon's statute allows a jury to compare the fault of all parties, including defendants who have already settled out of the case. This means a settlement doesn't remove that party's conduct from the overall fault comparison — it's a genuinely distinctive feature worth knowing in a multi-defendant claim.
A genuinely remarkable 30-year damages cap saga
Here's Oregon's biggest story. In 1987, during a wave of tort reform, Oregon enacted a $500,000 cap on noneconomic damages, ORS § 31.710. In 1999, the Oregon Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional. In 2016, the court's Horton v. OHSU decision overruled that earlier case and revived the possibility of applying the cap under a new legal test. Then, in 2020, in Busch v. McInnis Waste Systems, the Oregon Supreme Court finally and definitively struck the cap down again — this time specifically as applied to an ordinary personal injury claim brought by a living plaintiff. See our full guide to how fault and damages work together in Oregon for the rest of this story, including why the cap still survives for one specific kind of claim.
No joint and several liability
Under ORS § 31.610, there is no joint and several liability in Oregon. A defendant is generally responsible only for their own proportional share of the damages, not a co-defendant's share as well.