Liability as a function of plaintiff and defendant fault.

Five groups of fictitious case outlines were prepared about a plaintiff who sued a defendant for damages. Within each group of cases, we independently manipulated evidence about the apparent fault (here labeled the propensity to fault) in the plaintiffs conduct and in the defendant's conduct, as well as evidence about the severity of the harm. Subjects rated the responsibility of the plaintiff and the defendant for the harm and assessed the liability against the defendant. The data were consistent with a hierarchical model of identification and attributional processes in which propensity influences responsibility, which in turn, influences liability. Analyses based on a measure of relative responsibility suggested that the rule, liability should be proportional to fault, was an inadequate description of the data. This finding is discussed in the context of the legal doctrines of contributory and comparative negligence.