A harmed person must take reasonable steps to keep their losses from getting worse.

"Reasonable" is the key word, and bad advice often leaves it out. Mitigation does not mean you have to be perfect, cheap, or willing to suffer through unsafe treatment to help the other side save money. It usually means getting recommended medical care, following work restrictions, looking for suitable replacement work if you can, and not letting a fixable problem spiral into a larger one. If a doctor says physical therapy is needed and you skip it for no good reason, the defense may argue that some of your ongoing pain or lost income could have been avoided.

This matters because damages are only recoverable to the extent they were actually caused by the incident and not needlessly increased afterward. Insurance adjusters love to stretch this rule and act like every missed appointment destroys a claim. That is wrong. The question is whether your response was reasonable under the circumstances, not whether it was flawless.

In Idaho, mitigation works alongside comparative negligence under Idaho Code § 6-801 (1971). They are not the same thing. Comparative negligence looks at fault for causing the injury; mitigation looks at what happened after. On roads like US-95, where crashes can involve serious trauma and long gaps before specialty care, delays may be understandable if they are documented.