A genuinely conditional liability rule
Washington's approach to joint and several liability, under RCW 4.22.070, turns specifically on whether the plaintiff bears any fault at all. When the plaintiff is entirely fault-free, joint and several liability generally applies — meaning any one negligent defendant can be held liable for the full judgment, regardless of their own individual share of the total fault.
What changes once the plaintiff shares fault
The moment the plaintiff shares any fault at all, that joint and several exposure generally gives way to several-only liability: each defendant becomes responsible only for their own proportionate share of fault, not a co-defendant's share as well. This creates a genuinely meaningful fork depending on a single fact — whether the plaintiff bears zero fault or any fault whatsoever.
Immune entities are excluded from the comparison
When a jury apportions fault among the various entities that caused a claimant's damages, entities that are immune from liability to that claimant — such as an employer covered under Title 51 RCW's workers' compensation provisions — are generally excluded from that apportionment analysis entirely.
No punitive damages, regardless of the fault picture
Separately from how fault gets divided, Washington is one of only four states that doesn't allow recovery of punitive damages in personal injury cases at all — a real, significant feature of Washington tort law that applies no matter how the comparative fault analysis comes out, and no matter how egregious the defendant's conduct was.
Who decides
The jury generally bears the task of comparing the negligence of each party and expressing it in percentages, totaling 100% of the fault among everyone found to have contributed to the harm — including, where relevant, the plaintiff's own share. See our Washington comparative negligence calculator to see how that percentage translates directly into a dollar figure.