Li v. Yellow Cab Co.
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Li v. Yellow Cab Co., 532 P.2d 1226, 13 Cal.3d 804 (1975), commonly referred to simply as Li, is a California Supreme Court case which judicially embraced comparative negligence in California tort law, rejecting strict contributory negligence.
[edit] Facts of the Case
The case simply featured a traffic accident between the plaintiff and defendant, in which both of them were found to have been driving negligently. Under California law as it existed at the time of the case, this would have prevented any recovery whatsoever to Li, and the California Supreme Court (aware of the recent trend toward comparative, rather than contributory negligence) took the opportunity to reconsider the state's tort law on the subject.
[edit] Legal Reasoning
The only unique feature of the case is its reasoning regarding section 1714 of the Civil Code, which had been thought to codify the "all-or-nothing" approach to contributory negligence. While the plain meaning of section 1714 is quite clear, the court concluded that the legislature had not meant to stop the process of common-law evolution which is quite normal in state tort law, but rather simply to clarify the law as it then existed. This is an extraordinarily common technique of courts that want to continue the process of common-law evolution in the face of a statute set down at one time or another.[citation needed]
