A genuinely small, distinctive group
While most US states use some form of comparative negligence — reducing a plaintiff's recovery proportionally for their own share of fault — a small handful of jurisdictions have kept the older, stricter pure contributory negligence rule, where any fault at all can bar recovery entirely.
The five jurisdictions
Virginia's peer group under this rule generally includes: Virginia, Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, and Washington D.C. — a dramatically smaller list than the dozens of states using some form of comparative negligence.
A shared rule with a close neighbor
Virginia's neighbor Maryland also follows pure contributory negligence, meaning the same strict any-fault bar applies across that particular state line — a genuinely unusual regional concentration of this rule, given how rare it has become nationally.
The same core rule, with some variation in exceptions
The central bar — any plaintiff fault can eliminate recovery entirely — is shared across all five jurisdictions. But the specific exceptions available, such as the last clear chance doctrine, can vary in their precise application from one jurisdiction to the next, so an exception that applies cleanly in one of these places isn't automatically identical in another.
Why comparing these states to the rest of the country takes real care
Because these five jurisdictions apply a fundamentally different type of rule — a complete bar rather than a percentage-based reduction — comparing them to a 50% or 51% modified comparative state isn't simply a matter of degree. See our full comparison of how Virginia's rule fits among all four fault systems for the complete structural picture.