Opinion ID: 2275449
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Heading: contribution and apportionment.

Text: The right to contribution arises when two or more joint tortfeasors are guilty of concurrent negligence of substantially the same character which converges to cause the plaintiff's damages. In that scenario, the tortfeasors are said to be in pari delicto. Lexington Country Club v. Stevenson, Ky., 390 S.W.2d 137, 143 (1965). The common law rule was that each joint tortfeasor was entirely responsible for the plaintiff's single indivisible injury because it was thought that the injury could not be divided into parts to determine the responsibility of each negligent actor. Dix & Assocs. Pipeline Contractors, Inc. v. Key, supra, at 27. If the plaintiff sued all of the joint tortfeasors and each was found to be at fault and in pari delicto with the others, the plaintiff could recover the entire judgment against all or any one of them. 18 Am.Jur.2d Contribution § 40 (1985). If one defendant satisfied the entire judgment, he had no common law right to contribution from another jointly liable defendant. Id. Most jurisdictions, including Kentucky, have abrogated this unjust principle by statute. Kentucky has three statutes applicable to claims against or between joint tortfeasors, viz: KRS 454.040, KRS 412.030, and KRS 411.182. KRS 454.040 provides: In actions of trespass the jury may assess joint or several damages against the defendants. When the jury finds several damages, the judgment shall be in favor of the plaintiff against each defendant for the several damages, without regard to the amount of damages claimed in the petition, and shall include a joint judgment for the costs. This provision was first enacted in 1839. [2] In Ferguson v. Terry, 40 Ky. (1 B. Mon.) 96 (1840), the statute was held to authorize[] several verdicts to be found, and several judgments to be entered against each of several joint trespassers in a joint action. Id. (emphasis in original). In Central Passenger Ry. Co. v. Kuhn, 86 Ky. 578, 6 S.W. 441 (1888), the statute was recognized as a modification of the common law and was held to apply to all types of trespasses, including negligence actions. This statute affords a remedy against all joint trespassers, with the right on the part of the jury to punish the wrong-doer to the extent of his participation in the wrongful act, and, if one is the more guilty than the other, to punish him the more severely. Id., 6 S.W. at 447. However, the statute only affected the plaintiff's right of recovery and did not purport to create a right of contribution between or among the joint tortfeasors. In 1926, the General Assembly enacted what is now KRS 412.030, [3] which permits contribution among wrongdoers where the wrong is a mere act of negligence and involves no moral turpitude. The enactment of this statute permitted one who had satisfied a negligence claim to assert a claim for contribution in a separate action against a joint tortfeasor. Consolidated Coach Corp. v. Burge, 245 Ky. 631, 54 S.W.2d 16 (1932). The subsequent adoption of the Kentucky Rules of Civil Procedure allowed the claim to be presented in the same action by way of either a cross-claim, CR 13.07, or a third-party complaint, CR 14.01. Jackson & Church Div., York-Shipley, Inc. v. Miller, Ky., 414 S.W.2d 893 (1967); Elpers v. Kimbel, Ky., 366 S.W.2d 157, 161 (1963). The measure of contribution for a joint judgment was pro rata, or one-half of the amount of the judgment (or out-of-court settlement) in the case of two joint tortfeasors. Consolidated Coach Corp. v. Burge, supra, 54 S.W.2d at 18-19. Finally, a joint tortfeasor could not recover contribution from one against whom the person injured by the tort had no cause of action. Id., 54 S.W.2d at 17. The first Kentucky case requiring apportionment of causation between or among joint tortfeasors was Orr v. Coleman, supra . There, the plaintiff settled with one joint tortfeasor for $19,000 and went to trial against the other. The jury returned a verdict for $22,000, but did not indicate whether the verdict represented the plaintiff's total damages against which the $19,000 would be credited pursuant to, e.g., McCallum v. Harris, Ky., 379 S.W.2d 438, 442, 444 (1964), or whether it represented the non-settling tortfeasor's share of a $41,000 verdict pursuant to KRS 454.040. On appeal, it was held that the jury should have been instructed to determine the total amount of damages to be awarded to the plaintiff and to fix the percentages of causation attributable to each joint tortfeasor. Under this procedure, the plaintiff received the benefit of her bargain with the settling tortfeasor and the non-settling tortfeasor was liable for a portion of the total damages no greater (nor less) than that which correlated with the percentage of causation attributable to her negligence. The Court also noted that this procedure obviated any question of or necessity for a claim for contribution. Orr v. Coleman, supra, at 61. When Hilen v. Hays, supra , held that a contributorily negligent plaintiff could recover that portion of his/her total damages which correlated with the percentage of causation attributable to the defendant(s), i.e., comparative negligence, the stage was set for the series of decisions which culminated in Dix & Assocs. Pipeline Contractors, Inc. v. Key, supra . As summarized in Dix , liability among joint tortfeasors in negligence cases is no longer joint and several, but is several only; and because the liability is several as to each joint tortfeasor, it is necessary to apportion a specific share of the total liability to each of them, whether joined in the original complaint or by third-party complaint, and the several liability of each joint tortfeasor with respect to the judgment is limited by the extent of his/her fault. Id., 799 S.W.2d at 27-28. With some additional adjustments, KRS 411.182 is simply a codification of this common law evolution of the procedure for determining the respective liabilities of joint tortfeasors. Although as first noted in Orr v. Coleman, supra , the apportionment of causation and the requirement of several liability obviates any claim for contribution among joint tortfeasors whose respective liabilities are determined in the original action, we do not address here the viability of a claim for contribution against other joint tortfeasors who were not parties to that action. See KRS 411.182(4) and Copass v. Monroe County Medical Found., Inc., Ky. App., 900 S.W.2d 617 (1995).