Opinion ID: 1689505
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: rough apportionment

Text: In so holding, we reject petitioner's invitation for this Court to adopt into Florida law the rough apportionment method of dividing damages where the jury cannot apportion injury by a preponderance of the evidence. The Supreme Court of Hawaii in a scenario similar to the case sub judice held that it was error to instruct the jury that the defendant in the first accident would be liable for all the damages if it could not apportion damages between successive unrelated accidents. That court held that the proper procedure is for the trial court to instruct the jury that if it is unable to determine by a preponderance of the evidence how much of the plaintiff's damages can be attributed to the defendant's negligence, it may make a rough apportionment. Heretofore, this court has recognized that the law never insists upon a higher degree of certainty as to the amount of damages than the nature of the case admits, and that where, as here, the fact of damage is established, a more liberal rule is allowed in determining the amount.... Inherent in such a lessening of the burden of proof is the assumption that both parties will be permitted to introduce all relevant evidence pertaining to all the accidents even though all the alleged tortfeasors may not be before the court in the same action.... The trial court should instruct the jury that if it is unable to make even a rough apportionment, it must apportion the damages equally among the various accidents. We recognize that this resolution is arbitrary. It is, however, no less arbitrary than placing the entire loss on one defendant. Loui v. Oakley, 50 Haw. 260, 438 P.2d 393, 397 (1968) (footnote omitted). We decline to adopt rough apportionment into Florida law because it is a speculative method of apportioning damage since the jury is asked to make a decision by less than a preponderance of the evidence. [1] Furthermore, to proceed to the next stage of the rough apportionment method and simply divide evenly the damage between tortfeasors would work, in many cases, to deny plaintiffs recovery from tortfeasors not a party to the proceeding based on an apportionment that, again, is not supported by the greater weight of the evidence. Under either guise of rough apportionment, victims of negligence would be prevented from being compensated because inferior evidence would result in an arbitrary apportionment. Finally, we view our expansion of the rule in Hamblen and the adoption of the indivisible injury rule to be less of a departure from established Florida precedent than would be the case if we adopted rough apportionment into our jurisprudence. We therefore decline to adopt rough apportionment. Accordingly, we answer the certified question in the affirmative and approve the decision below. It is so ordered. HARDING, C.J., and SHAW, WELLS, ANSTEAD, LEWIS and QUINCE, JJ., concur. PARIENTE, J., recused.