Hit by a car — can you sue in Alabama?

Attorney Answer

Usually yes — but Alabama attaches a condition to that answer that most states do not, and it is the one thing worth understanding before you do anything else.

What a claim requires. To recover from the other driver you have to establish two things: that they were negligent, meaning they failed to use the care a reasonable driver would have used, and that their negligence caused your injuries. Most collisions supply the first without much difficulty — a driver who ran a light, followed too closely, turned across traffic or was not looking has failed that standard. Causation is usually proved by the medical records, which is why the treatment you get in the first days matters beyond your health.

What you can claim for is the treatment you have had and will need, the earnings you have lost, the damage to your vehicle, and the pain and the effect on your life. The last of those is the part people underestimate and insurers price lowest.

Then there is the condition.

Alabama is one of a handful of states that still applies contributory negligence, and it changes everything about a claim here. If the person claiming is found to have been negligent themselves, and that negligence helped cause the injury, they recover nothing — not a reduced amount, nothing. There is no apportionment and no percentage.

Two things soften that, and both matter.

It is a defense the other side has to prove. Contributory negligence is an affirmative defense, so the burden is on the defendant to establish it rather than on the claimant to disprove it. And it is not established simply by showing carelessness: the defendant generally has to show the claimant knew of the danger, appreciated it, and failed to take reasonable care anyway. Alabama's courts have said that simple heedlessness is not enough, and that it is normally a question for a jury rather than something decided as a matter of law.

And it is no defense at all to wanton conduct. Where the other party's behavior goes beyond ordinary negligence to wantonness, contributory negligence does not bar the claim. That makes how the other driver's conduct is characterized one of the most consequential questions in an Alabama case.

This is the single most important fact about bringing a claim in Alabama. In most of the country, if you were partly to blame your damages are reduced by your share. In Alabama they are not reduced — they are gone. It is why an insurer here will investigate what you did far more closely than you might expect, and why a small admission in a friendly phone call does disproportionate damage.

The practical consequences run in one direction. Say less to the other side's insurer than feels polite. Do not give a recorded statement before taking advice. Do not accept a first offer, which is an opening position rather than a valuation. And get advice earlier than you think you need it, because the facts that decide a contributory negligence argument — camera footage, witness memory, the state of the road — are gone long before the deadline to sue.

What you can do

1. Get the crash report and read it. If its account of what happened is wrong, that is far easier to deal with now than later. 2. See a doctor even if you felt able to carry on at the scene. An unexplained gap between the collision and the first appointment is the standard argument that an injury was not real. 3. Photograph the vehicles, the location and any visible injury, and keep the photographs. 4. Identify witnesses and find out whether any nearby camera covers the spot — ask for footage in writing, because most systems overwrite within days. 5. Keep everything: medical bills, records of time off, repair estimates, and the receipts for what this has cost you. 6. Do not give the other driver's insurer a recorded statement, and do not accept any offer, before taking advice. 7. Speak to an Alabama attorney. Most will assess a matter like this at no cost, and in a state where partial fault defeats a claim entirely rather than reducing it, that conversation is worth more here than it would be almost anywhere else.

⏱ Time limits apply. Ala. Code § 6-2-38(l) gives two years: “all actions for any injury to the person or rights of another not arising from contract and not specifically enumerated in this section must be brought within two years.” Evidence goes sooner — footage is overwritten and memories fade — so the practical deadline is usually much earlier than the legal one.

An Alabama attorney can tell you quickly how the facts here line up, and most will look at a matter like this at no cost.