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RALEIGH — Inches.

They were probably not enough to save Stephen Gates’ life the night in October 2003 when he stopped to fix a flat tire on an interstate exit ramp. The space his tire occupied on a white line would not have buffered Gates from the SUV that hit, dragged him and left him by the roadside.

But those inches were enough for the company that insured both the driver and the SUV’s owner to turn down claims by Gates’ parents. That news was delivered by phone the day after the 27-year-old’s funeral.

“It was devastating to us at a time when we were most broken,” Pat Gates , Stephen’s mother, said last week. “We weren’t able to get ourselves out of bed, much less deal with something like this.”

Gates still chokes up as she talks about her son’s death. But for the second time this decade, she is using his story to help push legislation through the General Assembly. In 2005, Gates helped change the state’s hit-and-run law.

This year, she is providing a human face for a proposal to change how courts determine fault in negligence cases.

North Carolina is one of four states in the nation that applies what lawyers call a “contributory negligence” standard to cases where people are accidentally harmed. Under that doctrine, courts are supposed to deny any monetary award if the injured party is even slightly to blame for his or her trouble.

In Gates’ case, the 2 or 3 inches his tire sat on the white line made up that little bit of fault — enough for the insurer to deny a claim and gamble that a court verdict would go its way.

Bills to change the state’s negligence standards have been pushed and failed since the mid-1980s. But a bill sponsored by Greensboro Rep. John Blust , a Republican, and backed by every House member from Guilford County, passed the House 72-43 this month.

The bill faces uncertain prospects in the Senate.

The measure faces opposition from the state’s largest insurers and business groups, who say it will drive up insurance costs and could have far-reaching consequences for the state’s economy.

The Gates family eventually did settle, but only after months of legal wrangling, concluding on the day before the case was to go to trial.

“These cases are all over the place, and they’re not all as tragic as ours,” Pat Gates said.

One such example came up during debate over the measure on the House floor.

“Most people affected are going to be regular people involved in regular accidents (with) regular claims, like mine that I had early in November,” Rep. Alice Bordsen , an Alamance County Democrat, said on the House floor.

She described tripping over a cable that had been stretched across the street, but not covered, by a county government. While county officials were willing to admit their fault, their insurer was less accommodating, Bordsen said, describing a phone interview with an agent.

“As we concluded the conversation, the agent did tell me, 'Now, Rep. Bordsen, you should know this as well as anybody, that if you were even the tiniest bit at fault, we’re not going to pay you a dime. Not a dime,’” Bordsen said.

Bordsen and other backers of the bill argued that the state should switch to a system in which fault is apportioned out to each party in a negligence case. So in the case of a $100,000 settlement, an injured party who was found to be 10 percent responsible for her accident would only be paid $90,000.

Of the 26,800 civil lawsuits filed in North Carolina’s superior courts last year, about a third were negligence cases and many of them involve auto accidents.

“North Carolina does have some of the lowest auto insurance rates in the country,” said Jennifer Cohen , executive director of the Insurance Federation of North Carolina, a trade group for insurers of auto- and homeowners. “We feel pretty confident that the current law weighs into our low insurance rates.”

Cohen argues that in South Carolina, the last state to switch away from a contributory negligence standard, auto rates are 38 percent higher. But backers of the switch say there are other factors that have driven up South Carolina’s rates.

In fact, neither opponents nor backers of the bill could point to studies that show what effect such a switch might have.

But on the floor, opponents expressed concern that switching standards could lead to an increase in the number of lawsuits filed and open the floodgates for high-dollar jury verdicts.

“North Carolina’s legal climate...is an important part of our business climate that helps attracts jobs and businesses,” said Sherry Melton , a vice president for the N.C. Chamber .

She said the bill as it is currently structured is “unbalanced” and could lead to unfair awards, particularly in cases where there’s more than one defendant.

In her example, two defendants might be found to be each 40 percent responsible for an injury. But if one could not pay part of that jury award, the other defendant could end up paying both shares, she said.

If the bill is meant to protect injured parties against getting far less than they’re owed, defendants should get the same protections, Melton said.

Blust, one of the primary sponsors of the bill, is sympathetic to that view and said last week that work continues to try to make the system more fair.

But Blust said that even without addressing those issues, his bill goes a long way toward fixing the “gross inequities” that he first learned about in law school.

“Contributory negligence from time to time can work incredible injustices,” Blust said.

“How many people are going to know when you get a flat tire at night, you better look and survey both ways and make sure you’re not two inches on the line? ”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com