Bifurcation is a legal procedure where a personal injury case is split into two separate trials or phases, with different issues decided at different times rather than all at once. The most common type of bifurcation separates the question of who was at fault (liability) from the question of how much money the injured person should receive (damages). This means the court first holds a trial to determine if the defendant is responsible for the accident, and only if the plaintiff wins that phase does the case proceed to a second trial about the amount of compensation.
Bifurcation is typically used in complex personal injury cases where liability and damages involve very different types of evidence and could confuse or prejudice a jury if heard together. For example, if someone is catastrophically injured in a car accident, the court might first focus solely on whether the defendant was negligent in causing the crash, without the jury hearing emotional testimony about the victim's suffering and medical expenses. If the defendant is found liable, a second phase would then focus entirely on determining fair compensation, allowing the jury to make each decision based on the most relevant evidence without being influenced by unrelated factors.
