Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/3d/80/500.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 06:12:12+00:00

Document:
TRANSPORT INDEMNITY COMPANY, Intervener and Respondent.
Fernandes & Le Berthon and James Fernandes for Defendant and Appellant.
Lascher & Wilner, Lowen H. Stanley and Edward L. Lascher for Plaintiff and Respondent.
Defendant Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Company (hereinafter defendant) appeals from a judgment entered in favor of plaintiff Glen O. Arbaugh (plaintiff) and plaintiff-in-intervention Transport Indemnity Company (intervener).
Plaintiff brought this action against defendant to recover damages for personal injuries he sustained at a warehouse owned by defendant while in the course of his employment for Signal Trucking Co. (Signal). The intervener herein was Signal's workers' compensation insurance carrier at the time of the accident. Also named in plaintiff's action was Thompson Brothers, Inc., another trucking company which operated within defendant's warehouse; plaintiff and intervener both eventually settled with Thompson Brothers, however, and the action was dismissed as to that defendant.
On November 5, 1971, plaintiff was working at defendant's Long Beach warehouse and soap loading dock while employed by Signal as a "spotter." Plaintiff's duties consisted of backing empty truck trailers up to the loading dock in their proper position (spotting) and then towing them away after they had been loaded.
While the handling of nose cones was primarily the responsibility of Signal employees, defendant's employees also occasionally moved them. Employees were instructed to place nose cones which were not in use against the loading dock wall because of the safety hazard they represented. Despite this policy, nose cones were frequently left standing on the cement apron which led up to the loading dock in order to allow easy access to them.
On the day in question, plaintiff was seriously injured when his right foot landed on a misplaced nose cone as he was descending from a tractor-trailer which he had spotted at defendant's loading dock.
Plaintiff's action against defendant was based on theories of negligence, negligent maintenance of property, and breach of duty by a "statutory employer." fn. 2 A bifurcated jury trial resulted in a special verdict wherein the jury determined that defendant and plaintiff's employer, Signal, had both been negligent, apportioning the negligence 50 percent to each; the jury found that plaintiff had not been negligent in caring for his own safety. The jury then awarded damages to plaintiff in the sum of $340,000 which included $44,836.17 in workers' compensation benefits which had previously been paid to plaintiff by intervener.
The court subsequently entered judgment against defendant and in favor of plaintiff in the sum of $294,163.83, and in favor of intervener in the sum of $21,918.08, the details of which are set forth infra.
We find that defendant's last three contentions lack substantial merit and therefore affirm the judgment insofar as it adjudges defendant liable to plaintiff for his injuries. We conclude, however, that the court erred in allowing the intervener any recovery on its claim for reimbursement of workers' compensation benefits paid since the amount of total damages which could be attributed to the negligence of plaintiff's employer was greater than the sum of those payments.
Defendant contends that the court's apportionment of damages was in error insofar as it (1) failed to limit defendant's liability to 50 percent of plaintiff's damages, the proportionate share of defendant's fault; and (2) permitted intervener a reimbursement on its lien for compensation benefits paid when that lien represented less than 50 percent of plaintiff's total damages.
As a result of the above, the retention of joint and several liability in third party suits can produce the type of inequitable apportionment of damages apparent in the case at bench. Here, both defendant and Signal were found to be 50 percent negligent in causing plaintiff $340,000 in [80 Cal. App. 3d 507] damages. In absolute terms, each party's liability should have been $170,000. Yet, because Signal's liability was limited to workers' compensation benefits, which in this case totaled $44,836.17, the application of the rule of joint and several liability leaves defendant with a disproportionate share of damages to pay if plaintiff is to be fully compensated for his injuries.
 We note that the court in American Motorcycle sought to avoid some of the inequities resulting from the retention of joint and several liability after Li by modifying the all-or-nothing rule of equitable indemnity previously followed in this state so as "to permit a concurrent tortfeasor to obtain partial indemnity from other concurrent tortfeasors on a comparative fault basis." (American Motorcycle Assn. v. Superior Court, supra, 20 Cal. 3d 578, 599.) As stated in the opinion, "'[t]here is obvious lack of sense and justice in a rule which permits the entire burden of a loss, for which two defendants were ... unintentionally responsible, to be shouldered onto one alone, ... while the latter goes scot free." (Id, at p. 608, quoting Prosser, Law of Torts (4th ed. 1971) § 50, p. 307.) [2b] The instant defendant, however, is not aided by the extension of the equitable remedy since, as the court recognized in a footnote, "... Labor Code section 3864 would normally preclude a third party tortfeasor from obtaining indemnification from the employer, even if the employer's negligence was a concurrent cause of the injury." (Id, at p. 607, fn. 9; see E. B. Wills Co. v. Superior Court, supra, 56 Cal. App. 3d 650, 653-655.) Nevertheless, it is implicit from the court's failure to otherwise distinguish third party suits that the inability of a third party tortfeasor to secure indemnification from a concurrently negligent employer will not prevent that third party from being held individually liable to an injured employee.
Other considerations compel this conclusion. First, the replacement of contributory negligence with a system of comparative fault was occasioned primarily by the recognized unfairness of preventing plaintiffs who were negligent in caring for their own safety from obtaining any recovery from other negligent parties; the impetus for the adoption of comparative negligence was not the desire to protect defendants from the consequences of their tortious acts. (See American Motorcycle Assn. v. Superior Court, supra, 20 Cal. 3d 578, 589-590; Li v. Yellow Cab Co., 13 Cal. 3d 804, 809-812 [119 Cal. Rptr. 858, 532 P.2d 1226, 78 A.L.R.3d 393].) Second, our Legislature has determined that a plaintiff injured in the course of his employment through the negligence of a third party should be entitled to recover "all damages" (Lab. Code, § 3852), and has further [80 Cal. App. 3d 508] recognized a plaintiff's right "to satisfy a judgment in full as against any tortfeasor judgment debtor" (Code Civ. Proc., § 875, subd. (g)). To deny application of the joint and several liability rule in third party actions would contravene these expressions of legislative intent by depriving some plaintiff-employees of maximum recovery for their injuries.
It is apparent that the all-or-nothing approach of Witt v. Jackson is inconsistent with the holding in Li that liability should now be apportioned according to fault. (Li v. Yellow Cab Co., supra, 13 Cal. 3d 804, 813.) The defense of employer's contributory negligence previously available to a third party tortfeasor must therefore give way to a system which allocates responsibility for damages owing to an injured employee on a comparative fault basis.
We conclude, however, that the approach taken by the trial court to determine the amount of reimbursement due the intervener was improper here since it unnecessarily exaggerated the already inequitable apportionment of damages which resulted from the application of comparative negligence principles to a third party suit. In this type of case, the third party tortfeasor should be required to reimburse the employer or his insurance carrier for compensation benefits paid only to the extent that such benefits have exceeded the proportionate share of damages attributable to the employer's negligence. Under this method of apportionment, the employer is liable for either the total amount of workers' compensation benefits paid or the difference between the third party's proportionate share of liability and the employee's total damages, [80 Cal. App. 3d 509] whichever is less. (See Note, supra, 50 So.Cal.L.Rev. 1029, 1045-1051.) This approach is thus in accord with the concern shown by the court in American Motorcycle that the entire burden of a loss for which two or more defendants were responsible should not be shouldered by one alone. (American Motorcycle Assn. v. Superior Court, supra, 20 Cal. App. 3d 578, 608.) Furthermore, implementation of the above-described rule will not contravene the policies of the workers' compensation system: employer liability will still be limited to the payment of compensation benefits (Lab. Code, § 3601, subd. (a)), while the employer's incentive for maintaining safe working conditions will be reinforced (Lab. Code, § 6400 et seq.).
Defendant contends that plaintiff was negligent in caring for his own safety as a matter of law. Its argument is as follows: (a) plaintiff, based on his long experience on the job, should have been well aware of the possible presence of nose cones near the parked trucks; (b) the cones were obvious to anyone who looked for them; (c) plaintiff, who apparently was not distracted, was negligent in failing to check the area where his feet were to land for the presence of nose cones prior to [80 Cal. App. 3d 510] descending from his tractor, as a reasonably prudent person would have done.
Plaintiff testified that when he approached the loading dock with his truck, he saw a nose cone near a trailer which had already been spotted, as well as several other nose cones scattered about the area. After spotting his trailer, plaintiff dismounted by emerging from the tractor's door backwards, stepping on the running board and the front tire, and then dropping to the ground--a method he had used for seven and one-half years. A method of dismounting suggested by counsel for defendant, in which the tractor's battery box would be used as a stepping point, was claimed by plaintiff to be both dangerous and impractical. Plaintiff testified on direct examination that he had looked down before stepping off the tractor, but saw nothing in the area where he was going to land, although he later stated on cross-examination that he was not sure whether he had, in fact, checked the area.
"An owner of property in control of premises where work is being done by employees of a contractor is an employer subject to the duty imposed [80 Cal. App. 3d 511] by the Labor Code ... to comply with the applicable safety provisions thereof.
"Where the owner retains only the right of general supervision over the premises to bring about a satisfactory completion of a contract, he is not an employer subject to the duties imposed by the Labor Code."
Finally, the jury was read the following modified version of BAJI No. 3.45 (6th ed. 1977): "If you find that Defendant Procter & Gamble or Plaintiff Arbaugh's employer, Signal Trucking, violated provisions of the Labor Code, just read to you, and that such violation was a proximate cause of the injury to Plaintiff, you will find that such violation was negligence unless such party proves by a preponderance of the evidence that it did what might reasonably be expected of a person of ordinary prudence, acting under similar circumstances, who desired to comply with the law."
After the jury had been thus instructed, defendant requested the trial judge in chambers to modify the last instruction, BAJI No. 3.45, so as to make it explicit that the jury was not to consider the Labor Code safety provisions in its determination of defendant's liability unless it first found that defendant had retained control over the premises where plaintiff suffered his injury. Defendant contends on appeal that the instructions were misleading as given and prejudiced defendant's ability to establish its defense that it had turned over control of the premises to plaintiff's employer. This contention lacks merit.
Here, the jury was instructed in former BAJI No. 8.33 that the Labor Code provisions would be applicable against defendant only if defendant was found to have been in control of the premises at the time of plaintiff's accident; it must be presumed that they followed this instruction before considering whether defendant had violated those provisions, as BAJI No. 3.45 then asked them to do.
Since we have determined that defendant's contentions are not entirely meritless, we decline to impose sanctions for a frivolous appeal as requested by plaintiff.
That portion of the judgment awarding the plaintiff $294,163.83 as against defendant is affirmed; the portion of the judgment awarding intervener $21,918.08 on its complaint-in-intervention against defendant [80 Cal. App. 3d 513] is reversed. Plaintiff shall recover his costs on appeal from defendant. As between defendant and intervener, defendant shall recover from intervener 50 percent of its costs incurred in the preparation of the record on appeal, with each party otherwise bearing its own costs.
Potter, Acting P. J., and Allport, J., concurred.
FN 2. See former Labor Code section 6304, since amended (Stats. 1971, ch. 1751, § 2, p. 3780, operative Apr. 1, 1972) so as to make the term "statutory employer" no longer applicable.

References: v. 
 § 50
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 § 3852
 § 875
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 § 3601
 § 6400
 § 2