Opinion ID: 2600489
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Pederson's Liability for the Compensatory Damage Award.

Text: The jury in this case found Aiken sixty percent at fault and Pederson forty percent at fault for the portion of Barnes's loss ($8,473.61) that occurred after Pederson breached his duty to her. The court, when entering final judgment against Pederson, ordered Pederson to pay the entire $8,473.61 amount. Pederson argues that the superior court erred when it held him jointly and severally liable with Aiken rather than apportioning the damages between them according to their percentage of fault. Analysis of Pederson's liability for compensatory damages requires interpretation of AS 09.17.080 and 09.17.900. Because statutory interpretation poses a question of law, this court uses its independent judgment [16] and adopts the rule of law that is most persuasive in light of precedent, reason, and policy. [17] When interpreting a statute, the court looks to three factors: the language of the statute, the legislative history, and the legislative purpose behind the statute. [18] When the jurors in this case allocated fault between Aiken and Pederson, they acted in conformity with AS 09.17.080(a)(2), which requires the trier of fact to indicate the percentage of total fault that is allocated to each defendant (as well as to others defined in subsection.080(a)). Subsection.080(d) requires the superior court to enter judgment against each party liable on the basis of several liability in accordance with that party's percentage of fault. [19] In 1997 the legislature amended the definition of fault found in AS 09.17.900 to include intentional conduct. [20] With this amendment, the legislature made it clear that it intended AS 09.17.080's several liability regime to extend to cases involving intentional conduct. [21] While the amended AS 09.17.900 and .080, when read together, clearly extend pure several liability to intentional torts, the statutes make no explicit mention of which type of liability applies in duty-to-protect cases. This court held in Kodiak Island Borough v. Roe that prior to 1997, torts stemming from a breach of the duty to protect were subject to joint and several liability, as described in the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Apportionment of Liability section 14. [22] While we declined to decide the issue in Kodiak, we suggested that the 1997 amendment might have displaced the common law and that section .900 may now permit an apportionment that is contrary to Restatement (Third) of Torts: Apportionment of Liability section 14. [23] Superior Court Judge John Reese grappled with the issue of liability in a duty-to-protect case, Doe v. State of Alaska, Department of Corrections. [24] In an order resolving motions for summary judgment and rule of law, Judge Reese decided that because the legislature did not expressly consider tortfeasors in duty to protect cases, and because including intentional acts in duty to protect cases undermines established policy in Alaska case law, AS 09.17.080 and .900 were ambiguous when applied to duty-to-protect cases. [25] Judge Reese concluded that because the duty of care . . . would effectively be nullified if the party entrusted with the duty to protect was permitted to allocate, and effectively shift, the fault to the subsequent intentional tortfeasor, [26] if Doe proved that the state had violated its duty of care, then the state and the intentional tortfeasor would be jointly and severally liable. [27] The superior court in this case relied upon Judge Reese's decision in Doe when it declined to allocate fault between Aiken and Pederson. Pederson argues that the superior court should not have relied upon Judge Reese's decision because he, unlike the state in the Doe case, had no duty to protect. We have already concluded that so long as he had reason to know of Aiken's crime or fraud, [28] Pederson did have a duty to take appropriate action to prevent or rectify it, [29] a duty the jury found Pederson to have breached. We therefore conclude that Pederson is liable to Barnes based on a failure to protect [her] from the specific risk of an intentional tort, [30] satisfying the Restatement's description of a duty to protect. Pederson argues in the alternative that the pure several liability regime created by AS 09.17.080 and .900 extends to duty-to-protect cases. We agree with Pederson that as a result of the 1997 amendment to AS 09.17.900, duty-to-protect cases are now subject to the pure several liability regime of AS 09.17.080. While Judge Reese was correct that AS 09.17.900 does not specifically address duty-to-protect cases, the legislative history indicates that the legislature considered and intended to include duty-to-protect cases in its amendment of AS 09.17.900. When the Governor's Advisory Task Force on Civil Justice Reform proposed amending AS 09.17.900, it chose to illustrate the effect of the new language with an example of a duty-to-protect case: [P]laintiffs sometimes sue the State for negligent supervision of a probationer who intentionally shoots the plaintiff. The plaintiff may fail to name the probationer as a defendant and attempt to allocate all fault to the State. This amendment clarifies the State's right to name the probationer as a third-party defendant and to have fault allocated against him or her for his or her intentional acts. This avoids the incongruous result of allocating fault to those who are negligent, but not to those who act intentionally.[ [31] ] When the task force's proposed amendment was presented to the legislature, the house majority leader's sectional summary stated that the amendment was taken verbatim from the Report of the Governor's Task Force. [32] Given the facts that the plain language of AS 09.17.900 makes no exception for the duty to protect, that the Governor's Advisory Task Force on Civil Justice Reform indicated that it intended the amended statute to reach duty-to-protect cases, and that the legislature incorporated by reference the task force's duty-to-protect example, we conclude that pure several liability applies in duty-to-protect cases. As a result, the superior court erred when it failed to apportion damages between Pederson and Aiken. A determination that Pederson can only be held severally liable does not end our inquiry into the exact amount of Pederson's liability, however. Pederson argues that because Aiken as part of his criminal conviction was ordered to pay Barnes restitution and because the superior court in the civil case issued a directed verdict against Aiken for the full amount of Barnes's loss, entering judgment against Pederson for any amount of Barnes's loss has the effect of holding him impermissibly jointly and severally liable with Aiken. We need not resolve in this case whether the $82,000 judgment against Aiken for the full amount of Barnes's loss, which includes the $8,473.61 that was due in part to Pederson's breach of duty, could result in an offset that would be to Pederson's benefit. [33] For resolution of this issue to be required, Aiken would need to have paid a sum which, taken together with Pederson's liability, would result in Barnes receiving a partial double recovery. [34] Since Aiken had only paid $2,640 of the judgment against him as of July 2004, the most recent figure available in the record, it appears that this triggering event has not taken place. Pederson also might be arguing that the superior court, when it granted the directed verdict for the full loss against Aiken, impliedly held that Pederson was innocent of wrongdoing. Since the superior court (1) believed that joint rather than several liability applied to the case; (2) submitted the issue of Pederson's fault to the jury; and (3) entered judgment against Pederson, the superior court clearly did not intend for its judgment against Aiken to indicate that Pederson had done no wrong. Because we conclude that Pederson is severally liable for the forty percent of fault allocated to him by the jury, we vacate the superior court's entry of judgment against Pederson and remand so that the court can enter judgment in the amount of forty percent of the loss Barnes incurred after Pederson breached his duty to her.