§ 33.001.Proportionate Responsibility

One sentence, and it decides the outcome of a great many Texas trials: a claimant may not recover damages if his percentage of responsibility is greater than 50 percent.

The threshold is exact and it is worth reading twice. A claimant found 50 percent responsible recovers, reduced by half. A claimant found 51 percent responsible recovers nothing at all. The single percentage point between those two findings is the difference between half the damages and none.

This is modified comparative responsibility. It is not the old contributory negligence rule, under which any fault by the claimant was a complete defence. Nor is it pure comparative fault, under which a claimant 90 percent at fault still collects 10 percent of the damages. Texas sits between the two, and the line sits at 50.

The practical consequence shapes how these cases are tried. A defendant does not have to persuade a jury that the plaintiff caused the whole accident — only that the plaintiff caused slightly more than half of it. That is a far easier target, and it is why apportionment questions get as much trial attention as liability itself.

The bar operates on the percentage the trier of fact assigns under the determination section. Everything else in the chapter — who gets listed on the verdict form, how settling persons count, whether a third party can be designated — feeds into that single number.