In Law both owner and Driver or Joint tort feasors (because of vicarious liability). Tort feasors are those who are responsible for the civil wrong (tort) and both are called into court to pay for tortious liability if proved. Latent Defect in the Machine– the driver or owner of a motor vehicle can take this defense if something goes wrong in the machine (like break failure) without their knowledge and causes the accident. Contributory Negligence and Composite Negligence decide the case, the court needs to judge who was the contributor to the accident or happening. If two vehicles are dashed against each other from the front, generally it is a 50:50 contribution, if it is a case involving a small vehicle (two-wheeler and four-wheeler) then it is treated as a 30:70 percent fault basis. If some person is jutting out the head from a window of a bus and is injured it is a case of fifty-fifty contributory negligence of the person jutting out and the driver of the vehicle (Bus). In some other case, it may happen that we have parked our vehicle by the side of a restaurant and suddenly a vehicle came with a great speed and hit our car while we were taking our food inside, our car went ahead and hit somebody who got injuries. Here directly we are not responsible for this accident because some other vehicle came and hit our parked vehicle, but still it was wrong parking and indirectly we are also involved in this accident, this is known as a case of composite negligence of ours and negligence of that vehicle which causes an accident. In Short different cases which are brought to the Court are decided based on contributory negligence, and composite negligence, and accordingly, apportionment is done between parties who will pay for it. Liability is Joint and Several – Normally a motor accident case is registered in the Court against Driver, Owner and an insurance company and when court decides the amount it is to be recovered from all the three (jointly or severally) which means any one or all the three parties can pay, usually it is paid by insurer only.