Opinion ID: 1654119
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: We Affirm the Court of Appeals' Decision Regarding Morgan's Percentage of Liability

Text: Morgan contends that the Court of Appeals erred by granting a petition for an extension of its opinion, and then extending its opinion to assign one hundred percent liability and damages against Morgan, despite the jury's finding that Morgan was only fifty percent responsible for the Scotts' injuries and resulting damages. We disagree and accordingly affirm the Court of Appeals determination. In support of his argument that he should bear only fifty percent of the liability for the Scotts' injuries, Morgan relies primarily upon the decision of this Court in Prudential Life Insurance Company v. Moody, [18] a decision premised on KRS 454.040, the statute that allows juries to assess joint or several damages against multiple defendants. [19] We find Morgan's reliance upon Prudential Life to be misplaced because it contains a critical factual difference. In Prudential Life , a jury determined that one party, Carney, was negligent and liable for the plaintiffs injuries, fixing his share of the fault at fifty percent. Carney, however, escaped responsibility for his negligence and the resulting liability because the statute of limitations had expired. He remained, both in fact and in law, at fault for the injury, but the running of the statute of limitations put his negligence beyond reach of the jury's verdict. [20] The remaining fifty percent of fault rested with the other tortfeasor. The causal connection between his negligent conduct and the damages did not increase simply because the plaintiff had waited too long to assert a claim against Carney. In sharp contrast to Carney in Prudential Life , Moore Pontiac escapes liability because it did nothing to incur liability and, as a matter of law, its actions were not a proximate cause of the Scotts' injuries. The applicability of Prudential Life is further diminished because it was rendered three years before the enactment of KRS 411.182(1), which requires apportionment of fault [i]n all tort actions ... involving fault of more than one (1) party to the action.... Here, there is not more than one party at fault. Morgan is the only party at fault. Only Morgan breached a duty and only Morgan caused an injury. In Prudential Life , Carney was at fault but avoided liability because the statute of limitations had expired. [21] Here, Moore Pontiac avoids liability for the simple reason that it did nothing that legally or proximately caused the injuries. Our decision in Owens Corning Fiberglas Corp v. Parrish, is more to the point: [F]ault may not be properly allocated to a party, a dismissed party or settling nonparty unless the court or the jury first find that the party was at fault; otherwise, the party has no fault to allocate. KRS 411.182; Floyd v. Carlisle Construction Co., Inc., 758 S.W.2d 430, 432 (Ky.1988) If there is an active assertion of a claim against joint tortfeasors and the evidence is sufficient to submit the issue of liability to each, an apportionment instruction is required whether or not each of the tortfeasors is a party-defendant at the time of the trial. Id. (emphasis added). The mere fact that a party has been sued or has settled does not permit the factfinder to allocate part of the total fault to that party. [22] What rings clear from Owens Corning is that fault may be apportioned only among those against whom the evidence of liability was sufficient to allow submission of the issue of fault to the jury. The inability of Morgan or the Scotts to present sufficient evidence of fault on the part of Moore Pontiac eliminated any proper allocation of fault to Moore Pontiac. The jury should not have been instructed on apportionment because Morgan was the only party liable. When, under the evidence, only one party is shown to have caused an injury, fault and its resulting liability cannot legally or rationally be apportioned elsewhere. This concept was also expressed by the decision of the Court of Appeals in Jenkins v. Best, in which the appellant claimed the right as a defendant in a tort action to appeal the dismissal of his co-defendant in order to preserve the possibility of an apportionment instruction. [23] The Court of Appeals noted that, while this right does exist, it does not give a party the right to apportion fault to persons whose liability has been judicially determined not to exist. [24] Moore Pontiac's liability has been judicially determined not to exist. There should have been no apportionment. Morgan emphasizes that our decision in Hilen v. Hays, [25] echoed by the enactment of KRS 411.182, firmly established the concept that it is fundamentally unfair to burden any party with more liability than his share of the fault would justify. We agree, but we can find nothing fundamentally unfair about assigning one hundred percent of the fault for an injury to the only party that breached a duty and caused the injury. Morgan argues that the Court of Appeals committed a procedural error by granting the Scotts' request for extension of its opinion regarding issues that were not properly preserved for appellate review. The initial opinion of the Court of Appeals simply reversed the trial court's judgment regarding the liability of Moore Pontiac and affirmed as to Morgan. Later, the Court of Appeals granted the Scotts' motion for an extension of that original opinion and then issued a revised opinion which added a provision remanding the matter to the trial court for entry of a judgment against Morgan for all of the damages determined by the jury. The proper means of preserving the issue, Morgan contends, would have been for the Scotts to have filed a protective cross-appeal. We agree that new issues cannot properly be raised in a petition for rehearing, but we do not see this matter as having raised a new issue, nor do we see how adding a cross-appeal to an already complex procedural appellate process would be necessary to address this matter. [26] The Court of Appeals' initial conclusion that Moore Pontiac's actions were not, as a matter of law, a proximate cause of the Scotts' damages left Morgan as the only party whose fault caused the injury and therefore, ipso facto, he was one hundred percent at fault. Correcting of the trial court's judgment to reflect what the law and the evidence had clearly established was simply the natural aftermath of the Court of Appeals' original opinion. The Court of Appeals' decision to extend the Opinion to provide guidance to the trial court in correcting the judgment was well within its purview under Civil Rule 76.32.