Opinion ID: 1377843
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Joint and Several or Several Liability

Text: (11) The last issue we determine is whether the defendants found liable in a market share action are to be held jointly and severally liable for the judgment or whether, as defendants here assert, each defendant should be liable only for the portion of a plaintiff's damages that corresponds to the percentage of its share of the relevant market for DES. The consequences of these methods of determining liability are markedly different. If such defendants are jointly and severally liable, a plaintiff may recover the entire amount of the judgment from any of the defendants joined in the action. Since the plaintiff is required under Sindell to join the manufacturers of only a substantial share of the appropriate market for DES, it follows that if joint liability were the rule, a defendant could be held responsible for a portion of the judgment that may greatly exceed the percentage of its market share. Under several liability, in contrast, because each defendant's liability for the judgment would be confined to the percentage of its share of the market, a plaintiff would not recover the entire amount of the judgment (except in the unlikely event that all manufacturers were joined in the action) but only the percentage of the sum awarded that is equal to the market shares of the defendants joined in the action. In the one case, it would be the plaintiff who would bear the loss resulting from the fact that some producers of DES that might have been found liable under the market share theory were not joined in the action (or if a defendant became insolvent), whereas in the other such losses would fall on the defendants. Since, as we pointed out in Sindell, there is little likelihood that all manufacturers of DES in the appropriate market would be amenable to suit, the adoption of one or the other basis for liability could significantly affect the amount of a plaintiff's recovery and, concomitantly, a defendant's liability. The Court of Appeal, in affirming the trial court's ruling that defendants could be held only severally liable in a market share action, correctly noted that while the complaint in Sindell alleged that the defendants were jointly and severally liable for the plaintiff's injuries, the opinion did not address the issue. Plaintiff's arguments in favor of joint liability are based largely on her reading of Sindell. She claims that defendants are ordinarily jointly and severally liable for a plaintiff's injuries, and if this court had intended a different rule as to defendants in a market share action, it would have said so. We need not labor unduly over her assertion. The question of joint liability was not considered in Sindell, and this omission should not be read as an implied holding in favor of such a rule. The passages from the opinion cited by plaintiff do not, as she suggests, lead inevitably to the conclusion that defendants in a market share action are jointly liable for payment of a plaintiff's damages. She claims that the requirement of Sindell that a plaintiff must join as defendants the manufacturers of a substantial share of the relevant DES market is itself an indication that defendants are jointly liable. If each defendant is to be liable only for a percentage of the judgment represented by its market share, she asserts, there would be no reason for the substantial share requirement. (See Murphy v. E.R. Squibb & Sons, Inc. (1985) 40 Cal.3d 672, 700, 701 [221 Cal. Rptr. 447, 710 P.2d 247], dis. opn. of Kaus, J.) But Sindell provides an altogether different reason for the substantial share requirement: its purpose is to diminish the injustice of shifting the burden of proof to defendants to demonstrate that they could not have made the drug which caused the plaintiff's injuries. (26 Cal.3d at p. 612.) Another passage in the opinion which plaintiff claims supports her position is the statement that after a plaintiff in a market share action has met her burden of joining the required defendants, they in turn may cross-complain against other DES manufacturers, not joined in the action, which they can allege might have supplied the injury-causing product. ( Id. at p. 612.) Plaintiff asserts that if each defendant contributed to the judgment according to its market share, there would be no incentive for it to join other manufacturers, and therefore this statement indicates that defendants are jointly liable. But there are a number of reasons why a defendant manufacturer might wish to cross-complain against another not joined in the action. For example, as the decision itself suggests, a defendant might desire to show that another producer made the DES that caused the injury; the presence in the action of additional defendants might assist in providing a more complete picture of the relevant market, thereby possibly diluting a defendant's ultimate liability; or the addition of another defendant could assist with the burden of defending the action. In sum, there is nothing in the language of Sindell which leads necessarily to the conclusion that defendants in a market share action are to be held jointly liable for a plaintiff's damages. Instead of endeavoring to draw inferences from the language of Sindell as to an issue that the case did not decide, in determining whether defendants should be held jointly liable we look to the purposes underlying the market share principle and whether joint liability will promote those purposes. In creating the market share doctrine, this court attempted to fashion a remedy for persons injured by a drug taken by their mothers a generation ago, making identification of the manufacturer impossible in many cases. We realized that in order to provide relief to an injured DES daughter faced with this dilemma, we would have to allow recovery of damages against some defendants which may not have manufactured the drug that caused the damage. To protect such defendants against excessive liability, we considered and rejected three separate theories of liability suggested by the plaintiff, and formulated, instead, the market share concept. We explained the basis of the doctrine as follows: In order to decrease the likelihood that a manufacturer of DES would be held liable for injuries caused by products not of its making, and to achieve a reasonable approximation of its responsibility for injuries caused by the DES it produced, the plaintiff should be required to join in the action the manufacturers of a substantial share of the relevant DES market. If this were done, the injustice of shifting the burden of proof to defendants to exonerate themselves of responsibility for the plaintiff's injuries would be diminished. Each defendant would be held liable for the proportion of the judgment represented by its market share, and its overall liability for injuries caused by DES would approximate the injuries caused by the DES it manufactured. A DES manufacturer found liable under this approach would not be held responsible for injuries caused by another producer of the drug. The opinion acknowledged that only an approximation of a manufacturer's liability could be achieved by this procedure, but underlying our holding was a recognition that such a result was preferable to denying recovery altogether to plaintiffs injured by DES. It is apparent that the imposition of joint liability on defendants in a market share action would be inconsistent with this rationale. Any defendant could be held responsible for the entire judgment even though its market share may have been comparatively insignificant. Liability would in the first instance be measured not by the likelihood of responsibility for the plaintiff's injuries but by the financial ability of a defendant to undertake payment of the entire judgment or a large portion of it. A defendant that paid a larger percentage of the judgment than warranted by its market share would have the burden of seeking indemnity from other defendants (Code Civ. Proc., § 875; American Motorcycle Association v. Superior Court (1978) 20 Cal.3d 578 [146 Cal. Rptr. 182, 578 P.2d 899]), and it would bear the loss if producers of DES that might have been held liable in the action were not amenable to suit, or if a codefendant was bankrupt. In short, the imposition of joint liability among defendant manufacturers in a market share action would frustrate Sindell's goal of achieving a balance between the interests of DES plaintiffs and manufacturers of the drug. This holding is consistent with the views of commentators who, with a few exceptions, have concluded that Sindell in effect held or should have held that defendants are not jointly liable for damages in a market share action. (Schwartz & Mahshigian, Failure to Identify the Defendant in Tort Law: Towards a Legislative Solution (1985) 73 Cal.L.Rev. 941, 957; note, Sindell v. Abbott Laboratories: A Market Share Approach to DES Causation (1981) 69 Cal.L.Rev. 1179, 1194; Comment, The Market Share Theory: Sindell's Contribution to Industry-Wide Liability (1981) 19 Hous. L.Rev. 107, 131-132; note, Products Liability (1981) 34 Okla.L.Rev. 843, 853; note, Market Share Liability: An Answer to the DES Causation Problem (1981) 94 Harv. L.Rev. 668, 673; note, DES: Judicial Interest Balancing and Innovation (1981) 22 B.C.L.Rev. 747, 770, 774.) (12) Finally, plaintiff proposes an alternate means to apportion liability among defendants. She suggests that if we conclude that joint liability is not appropriate, each defendant's liability should be inflated in proportion to its market share in an amount sufficient to assure that plaintiff would recover the entire amount of the judgment. While this ingenious approach would not be as unjust to defendants as joint liability, we decline to adopt the proposal because it would nonetheless represent a retreat from Sindell's attempt to achieve as close an approximation as possible between a DES manufacturer's liability for damages and its individual responsibility for the injuries caused by the products it manufactured. The judgment of the Court of Appeal is affirmed.