Opinion ID: 2208003
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Required Disposition.

Text: Finally, we must consider the disposition which is appropriate as a result of William's fault having been improperly submitted to the jury. Mary argues that the court may correct the verdict by a process of interpolation. She suggests this may be accomplished by disregarding William's fault and assessing twenty-seven thirty-sevenths of the remaining aggregate fault to the Schwennen defendants and ten thirty-sevenths thereof to Floyd County. For reasons which we discuss we find this suggestion to be untenable. In Nichols v. Westfield Industries, 380 N.W.2d 392, 401-02 (Iowa 1985), we considered whether the elimination on appeal of claims against some but not all defendants requires a new trial for purposes of rendering a new apportionment of causal fault among the remaining parties. We suggested that the test for deciding this question is not whether the remaining parties might obtain a different result in a new trial, but, rather, whether any injustice befell those parties at the original trial as a result of submitting improper claims against other parties. Id. Judged by this standard, we conclude that the issue of the proper apportionment of aggregate fault between the Schwennen defendants and Floyd County must be retried. A salient feature of our comparative fault legislation is the provision in section 668.3(5) that the jury must be made aware of the effect of its fault apportionment on the claimant's right of recovery. In Reese, 379 N.W.2d at 4, we found it to be reversible error for the court to fail to instruct on this matter or to give misleading instructions with respect thereto. The instructions given the jury in the present case were based on the premise that William could be subjected, as he was, to some allocation of causal fault. When William's fault is disregarded the interpolated verdicts suggested by Mary will have a substantially different effect on the Schwennen defendants and Floyd County than the jury would have perceived them to have under the trial court's instructions. This circumstance, we believe, requires that the apportionment of fault among the remaining parties must be tried anew. We do not believe, however, that it is necessary to retry the issues concerning the total amount of Mary's damages. The jury was instructed pursuant to section 668.3(2)(a) that this determination was to be made irrespective of the fault of any of the parties. Under the circumstances it will not be assumed that any error committed on the apportionment of fault would corrupt the jury's determination as to the total amount of damages suffered by Mary. See, e.g., Rinkleff v. Knox, 375 N.W.2d 262, 269 (Iowa 1985). Upon retrial the total amount of Mary's damages will be deemed to be the amount established by the jury at the initial trial. Mary's judgment against William is reversed. Her judgment against the Schwennen defendants is reversed and the case is remanded for a retrial of that claim for purposes of establishing the proper apportionment of causal fault between those defendants and Floyd County. Their combined fault should total 100% of the causal fault involved in Mary's claim against the parties to this action. Because Floyd County is no longer a party to the action its fault shall be treated as that of a released party under section 668.2(3). [4] Costs of this appeal are assessed fifty percent to Mary E. Abell and fifty percent to the Schwennen defendants. REVERSED AND REMANDED.