Opinion ID: 1486394
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Joint and Several Liability and the Principle of Fairness

Text: The general trend toward the adoption of comparative negligence has led to a trend toward the adoption of comparative fault on the defendants' side. The reexamination of the rules concerning contributory negligence and contribution among joint tortfeasors has also led to reexamination of the rule of joint and several liability. Four arguments have been presented for retaining the rule of joint and several liability in a comparative fault system. American Motorcycle Association v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County, 20 Cal.3d 578, 146 Cal. Rptr. 182, 578 P.2d 899, 904-06 (1978). These arguments may be summarized as follows: (1) A tortious injury is indivisible, and a joint or concurrent tortfeasor is liable for any indivisible injury of which his negligence is a proximate cause. The fact that fault is apportioned on a comparative negligence basis does not render a tortious injury divisible for purposes of the rule of joint and several liability. (2) The law is loath to permit an innocent plaintiff to suffer loss as against a wrongdoing defendant. A faultless plaintiff should not bear the risk of loss if one of the concurrent tortfeasors is unable to satisfy his proportionate share of the damages. (3) A plaintiff's culpability is unlike that of a negligent defendant, because the plaintiff's negligence relates to a lack of care for his own safety, while the defendant's negligence relates to a lack of care for the safety of others; the latter is tortious, but the former is not. (4) Adoption of a rule of proportionate liability would, in practice, impair the ability of negligently injured persons to receive adequate compensation. Fairness dictates that the wrongdoers should be left to work out among themselves any apportionment. Brief analysis of these arguments discloses the sound policy underlying retention of a limited form of the rule of joint and several liability of joint and concurrent tortfeasors. [5] The argument that a concurrent tortfeasor is liable for all damages flowing from an indivisible injury of which his negligence is a proximate cause is clearly inconsistent with the principle that liability for damage will be borne by those whose negligence caused it in direct proportion to their respective fault. The attempt in argument (1) above to justify the rule of joint and several liability by formulating a restrictive definition of divisibility of tortious injury appears to assume the conclusion it purports to establish. The argument leaves unanswered the central question whether liability should be assessed in accordance with the proportion of damage for which a defendant is at fault or in accordance with the character of the injury. No reason appears for characterizing tortious injuries as indivisible except to rationalize continuing the rule of joint and several liability. Placing reliance on characterization of the injury as divisible or indivisible to determine the distribution of liability is as arbitrary as was the use of the labels active and passive or primary and secondary prior to Whitehead and Kales . The terms indivisible injury and relative fault would appear to be mutually exclusive. Argument (3) is also subject to criticism: it is not made clear why the fact that the self-directed negligence of a plaintiff is nonactionable should justify permitting the plaintiff to execute for 100% of his or her judgment against a defendant who was causally responsible for only a portion of the damages. Reliance on these two arguments represents a form of judicial inertia; in fact, decisions that recite these arguments also rely on the claim that no state has abolished the rule of joint and several liability unless a statute specifically abolishes it. Seattle First National Bank v. Shoreline Concrete Co., 91 Wash.2d 230, 588 P.2d 1308, 1313 (1978); American Motorcycle Association v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County, 20 Cal.3d 578, 146 Cal. Rptr. 182, 578 P.2d 899, 906 (1978). [6] That claim is no longer true. Laubach v. Morgan, 588 P.2d 1071, 1074 (Okl.1978). Even if the rule were universally retained, however, the principle of fairness propounded in Whitehead and Kales requires its reexamination. Whitehead and Kales presents a paradigm case of reasoned departure from the rule of stare decisis. The fact that a rule has long been followed does not require that we continue to follow it, if the reason for the rule has ceased to operate. As Mr. Justice Holmes pointed out: It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past. O. Holmes, Collected Legal Papers 187 (1920); Holmes, The Path of the Law, 10 Harv.L.Rev. 457, 469 (1897). In the words of Mr. Justice Douglas, a judge cannot avoid reexamining precedents unless he lets men long dead and unaware of the problems of the age in which he lives do his thinking for him. Douglas, Stare Decisis, 49 Colum.L.Rev. 735, 736 (1949). At least some of the reasons originally offered for the rule of joint and several liability in Missouri have vanished long since. In Newcomb v. New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Co., 169 Mo. 409, 426, 69 S.W. 348, 353 (1902), the Court quoted Bishop, Noncontract Law § 518, for the reason underlying the rule of joint and several liability: [S]ince the habitations and life of man are in the midst of constantly active forces in nature, and his necessities compel him to be perpetually active also, it is not possible in jurisprudence, nor would it be just to limit one's responsibility for harm inflicted on another through his acts, to the particular injuries whereof those acts are the sole cause. Indeed, a sole cause is a thing seldom found in our complicated world. Nor would it be practicable, nor yet is it demanded by any principle of justice, to take into the account all the combining causes of an injury, and charge the author of each cause with simply his proportion of the damage. Therefore the rule of the law is, that a person contributing to a tort, whether his fellow-contributors are men, natural, or other forces, or things, is responsible for the whole, the same as though he had done all without help. The limit to this rule, in civil jurisprudence is simply what is required by another rule, namely, that [a person who has suffered an injury is entitled to receive his damages but once] . . . . J. Bishop, Noncontract Law § 518, p. 229 (1889); 169 Mo. at 426, 69 S.W. at 353. (Emphasis added.) The rule of joint and several liability can no longer be justified by the impracticability of assessing proportionate fault among multiple tortfeasors. This reason for the rule was completely eradicated by Whitehead and Kales , in which the Court stated that instructing a jury to apportion the respective fault of concurrent tortfeasors would present no insurmountable problem to the jury. We already differentiate verdicts among joint tortfeasors where punitive damages are involved. The jury is instructed that they may find punitive damages against several defendants in differing amounts, depending upon differing degrees of culpability, State ex rel. Hall v. Cook, 400 S.W.2d 39, 42 (Mo. banc 1966); MAI 10.03; MAI 36.12. A system of apportionment of damages has long been in use in Missouri in Federal Employer's Liability Act cases, where the assessment of the extent of plaintiff's relative fault (contributory negligence) is handled by a simple instruction that if the plaintiff is found to be contributorily negligent, then the jury must diminish the sum in proportion to the amount of negligence attributable to [plaintiff] [decedent]. MAI 32.07, Notes on Use (2d ed. 1969). 566 S.W.2d at 472. More importantly, the holding of Whitehead and Kales shows how far we have moved from the view expressed in Newcomb that no principle of justice demands that we take into account all the combining negligent causes of an injury and charge the author of each cause with simply his proportion of the damage. The principle of fairness articulated in Whitehead and Kales demands precisely the kind of apportionment that Newcomb rejected. The only remaining rationale for retaining a rule of joint and several liability is the practical consideration that in certain cases the plaintiff is completely innocent and one or more of concurrent tortfeasors is unable to pay his or her proportionate share of the damages. In such a case, the plaintiff should be permitted to receive complete compensation from any one of the tortfeasors, leaving that wrongdoer to seek indemnity or contribution from the other concurrent tortfeasors. See arguments (2) and (4) above. Where one of several concurrent tortfeasors is insolvent, complete abolition of the rule of joint and several liability would result in an innocent plaintiff bearing the burden of a loss that he or she in no way caused, which would violate our principle of fairness. Placing the risk of a tortfeasor's insolvency on other tortfeasors through a limited rule of joint and several liability may be seen as applying the principle of fairness to innocent plaintiffs: the plaintiff should not be forced to bear the burden of losses which others have caused him and which did not result from his own negligence. [7] These considerations, however, do not justify retention of a blanket rule that a plaintiff may always execute for 100% of his or her judgment against one who is less than 100% at fault. The rule of joint and several liability should be retained only to the extent necessary to ensure that a faultless plaintiff does not bear a loss which he or she did not negligently cause. Only to that extent is the rule of joint and several liability compatible with our system of relative fault. Accordingly, no plaintiff should be able to recover from one of multiple tortfeasors more than that tortfeasor's proportion of fault, absent a showing that the plaintiff is unable to satisfy his or her judgment against another of the concurrent tortfeasors.