 Finally you have damages. So you had a duty and you breached it and it caused harm. Did the harm cause any damages? How much money were the damages worth? There are basic damages that get paid to replace property or pay medical bills. There are also nominal damages where you did something that was a tort but it didn't cost very much so a number has just been assigned to it. Usually this is just one dollar. Plus if you act especially badly, particularly if you committed an intentional tort then the court might add punitive damages as well where you pay extra money as a punishment. In a case where more than one person helped cause the damages then the court will help split the costs among them based on how much harm each caused if it can. Sometimes there is no way to tell so the court assigns 100% of the harm to each one. It doesn't mean the damages can be recovered more than once just that the person who got hurt doesn't have to deal with trying to collect from someone who doesn't have enough money. If you get sued for negligence there are ways for you to defend yourself. No. Legal defenses. Still no. One defense you can use is the person you hurt was also being negligent. In most places they'll still be able to sue you they'll just get less money because their damages will be reduced by the percentage that they are at fault for the accident. There are a few places though where you can't sue at all if you did cause any portion of the harm. Another defense is assumption of risk. This is where the court decides that you agreed to accept the risk of harm from something dangerous. So once you agree to that you can't turn around and say you want to sue under the famous no-backseas doctrine of law. The difference between consent and assumption of risk is that consent is agreeing to let someone do harm to you where assumption of risk is agreeing to do something like drag racing where harm might happen. Plus you can assume risk without saying anything just by knowingly doing the dangerous thing while consent generally requires you to come out and say it. If you do assume the risk you don't assume the risk of someone acting with gross negligence which is basically someone acting recklessly. Where negligence is making a mistake you should have avoided recklessness is acting without thinking about the consequences at all and putting others in great danger. The exact difference between negligence and recklessness is hard to nail down except in specific cases. A more technical defense is the statute of limitations. Under the law you can only file a lawsuit within a certain amount of time from the damage. The idea is that you don't want people bringing up cases from 50 years ago. You want things to go to court when they're fresh and all the witnesses are around and then get them dealt with. The actual time period depends from place to place. Similarly different places of different rules about whether the period counts from when you were injured or when you discovered the injury which can be a big difference. And finally there are immunities or people you're just not allowed to sue. It used to be that husbands and wives couldn't sue each other but that's not true anymore to the great delight of marriage counselors everywhere. In many places children either aren't allowed to sue their parents before they turn 18 the children not the parents though some of those places allow a child to sue their parents in certain situations. You can only sue the government if it has passed a law allowing you to sue in specific circumstances which is no doubt good news for the DMV. You are allowed to sue an employer for harm their employees caused though as long as the harm is caused while the employee was doing their job. So it might really depend who you can and can't sue in each case. And there you have it.