Pardon my absence.

[misterhaan]

No, if you rear-end someone, it is always (legally) your fault.

last time i was in an accident it was somebody hitting the rear end of my car, but as i was going in reverse (backing out of a parking stall), it was legally my fault.  nevermind the fact that the lady who hit me had to have been doing close to 30 just a few feet out from the back end of all the cars that were parked there . . .
i didn't get a ticket but now my insurance goes up because of some lady who's in too much of a hurry to get to work in the morning to actually drive safely.

[V-Adore]

Bleeding oil? Man, that's not good.

Dizzamn. Gotta hope for insurance at this point, I guess.

[side_show]

No, if you rear-end someone, it is always (legally) your fault.

This is not always the case.  I actually was involved in two accidents on the same day:

1) on the way to my parent's I was stopped behind an SUV at a red light.  The SUV suddenly backed directly into me - thankfully not hard enough to set of the air bag, but smashing in my driverside headlights, scratching my bumper and denting the hood.  The other driver was found to be fully at fault.  And I got almost $900 to repair it.  Thankfully there were a lot of witnesses.

2) on the same day, to make me feel better, my parents took me out for ice cream - as they pulled into their parking spot the driver in the car next to the spot swung his door opend and it scraped along the side of my parent's vehicle. The other car was found to be at fault.

I'm guessing if the police were there and gave you a ticket you're SOL unless there were other impartial witnesses who saw the old lady slam the breaks for no reason.  I've killed a car in an accident that was totally my fault before and it was not rad.

[CortJstr]

Even if the old lady stopped for no reason it would be Jl's fault because she was too close. In theory had she been a car length back she also could've stopped. Now if the old lady cut in front of you then stopped that would be different.

[jay-ell]

Yeah, there were witnesses but it was still my fault because (ideally) I should have allowed more space.  To be honest, though, I had gone about twenty yards behind this lady, having just turned left onto the road where the accident occurred, so I can't have been going more than 30 mph, so most of it was just that I wasn't expecting to have to stop so suddenly.  

Side_show, the accident you describe involves backing into someone, which isn't hitting someone from the rear but rather hitting someone with your rear (in the '60s this popular pastime was known as The Bump).  It's not the same as rear-ending another car with the front of your car while you are directly behind them, from a legal standpoint.