§ 25-21,185.12.Civil actions to which contributory negligence is a defense; assumption of risk, defined; affirmative defense.

Section 25-21,185.12 closes out the group of sections governing modern comparative negligence by defining a related defense: assumption of risk. The section first fixes its procedural status — assumption of risk is an affirmative defense, meaning the defendant bears the burden of raising and proving it rather than the claimant having to disprove it.

The definition itself has three parts, and a defendant relying on this defense has to establish all three. First, the person knew of and understood the specific danger involved, not merely a general awareness that some risk existed. Second, the person voluntarily exposed himself or herself to that danger, rather than encountering it involuntarily or through no meaningful choice. Third, the person’s injury or death, or the harm to property, occurred as a result of that exposure to the danger — tying the outcome directly back to the specific risk the person knowingly and voluntarily accepted.

Because it works alongside the comparative negligence sections that precede it, this definition gives the assumption-of-risk defense a fixed shape rather than leaving juries to apply a vaguer, common-law version of the doctrine.