The old common-law doctrine of contributory negligence, which used to hold that if a plaintiff was in any way negligent he was barred from recovery, has been superseded in virtually every state including Georgia. Most states today use some form of comparative fault (also referred to as comparative negligence) when apportioning between the plaintiff and the defendant or defendants their respective share of the blame for the occurrence of the event that led to the plaintiff's injuries. In Georgia, the general rule of comparative fault is that if the jury finds that the plaintiff is 50 percent or more at fault this has the same effect as the old contributory negligence rule: the plaintiff is barred from any recovery. As long as the plaintiff is less than 50 percent at fault, then the plaintiff's award is reduced by the percentage of his or her negligence. Thus, for example, if in…