Opinion ID: 1702971
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Apportionment of fault to Bracken

Text: ¶ 10. At trial, both Anderson and Accu-Fab requested jury instructions which would have required the jury to include Bracken, Ladner's employer, in the apportionment of liability. The trial court denied the instructions, and now both Anderson and Accu-Fab argue that pursuant to Estate of Hunter v. General Motors Corp., 729 So.2d 1264 (Miss.1999), the jury should have been allowed to apportion fault to Bracken. ¶ 11. In Estate of Hunter, we held that pursuant to Miss.Code Ann. § 85-5-7, the jury should be allowed to apportion fault to a settling defendant who is no longer a party to the case and in so doing stated: This Court agrees with the aforementioned commentators that the policy considerations underlying the comparative fault doctrine would best be served by the jury's consideration of the negligence of all participants to a particular incident which gives rise to a lawsuit. A rule of law limiting a jury to a consideration of the fault of the parties at trial would permit a plaintiff to settle with a defendant primarily responsible for a given accident, file suit against a deeper pockets defendant who may bear little if any responsibility for the accident, and thereupon require the jury to allocate all of the responsibility for the plaintiff's injuries between the plaintiff and the non-settling defendant. It would be patently unfair in many cases to require a defendant to be dragged into court for the malfeasance of another and to thereupon forbid the defendant from establishing that fault should properly lie elsewhere. Such a procedure invites inequitable results which, in certain cases, could arguably rise to the level of a due process violation. Id. at 1273. ¶ 12. Estate of Hunter, however, does not apply in the present case. Ladner was covered under the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act (LHWCA), 33 U.S.C. § 901 et seq., and therefore federal maritime standards govern. Calhoun v. Yamaha Motor Corp., 216 F.3d 338 (3rd Cir.2000). The United States Supreme Court addressed this question in Edmonds v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 443 U.S. 256, 99 S.Ct. 2753, 61 L.Ed.2d 521 (1979). ¶ 13. In Edmonds, a longshoreman employed by a stevedoring concern was injured while unloading cargo from a vessel. Id. at 258, 99 S.Ct. at 2755. The injured longshoreman received benefits from his employer under the LHWCA, and in addition he brought a negligence action against the shipowner. The trial court reduced the award to the longshoreman by the ten percent attributed to his own negligence, but refused to reduce the award against the shipowner in proportion to the fault of the employer. Id. The United States Supreme Court found that it would be improper to allow such a reduction, and in so doing stated: Congress clearly contemplated that the employee be free to sue the third-party vessel, to prove negligence and causation on the vessel's part, and to have the total damages set by the court or jury without regard to the benefits he has received or to which he may be entitled under the Act. Furthermore, under the traditional rule, the employee may recover from the ship the entire amount of the damages so determined. If he recovers less than the statutory benefits, his employer is still liable for the statutory amount. Under this arrangement, it is true that the ship will be liable for all of the damages found by the judge or jury; yet its negligence may have been only a minor cause of the injury. The stevedore-employer may have been predominantly responsible; yet its liability is limited by the Act, and if it has lien rights on the longshoreman's recovery it may be out-of-pocket even less. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Under the Court of Appeals' proportionate-fault system, the longshoreman would get very little, if any, of the diminished recovery obtained by his employer. Indeed, unless the vessel's proportionate fault exceeded the ratio of the compensation benefits to total damages, the longshoremen would receive nothing from the third-party action, and the negligent stevedore might recoup all of the compensation benefits it had paid. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Some inequity appears inevitable in the present statutory scheme, but we find nothing to indicate and should not presume that Congress intended to place the burden of the inequity on the longshoreman whom the Act seeks to protect. Id. at 268-70, 99 S.Ct. at 2760-61 (footnotes omitted). ¶ 14. We find Edmonds to be controlling in the present case. Here Ladner's family received benefits under the LHWCA; and therefore, it would not be proper to reduce the award against Accu-Fab and Anderson in proportion to the fault of Ladner's employer, Bracken. ¶ 15. Furthermore, we would reach the same conclusion even if the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act was not implicated. In Estate of Hunter v. General Motors Corp., 729 So.2d 1264 (Miss.1999), we stated: This Court agrees with the aforementioned commentators that the policy considerations underlying the comparative fault doctrine would best be served by the jury's consideration of the negligence of all participants to a particular incident which gives rise to a lawsuit. A rule of law limiting a jury to a consideration of the fault of the parties at trial would permit a plaintiff to settle with a defendant primarily responsible for a given accident, file suit against a deeper pockets defendant who may bear little if any responsibility for the accident, and thereupon require the jury to allocate all of the responsibility for the plaintiff's injuries between the plaintiff and the non-settling defendant. Id. at 1273 (footnote omitted). ¶ 16. Our decision in Estate of Hunter relied in part on a law review article Jonathan Cardi, Apportioning Responsibility to Immune Nonparties: An Argument Based on Comparative Responsibility and the Proposed Restatement (Third) of Torts, 82 Iowa L.Rev. 1293 (1997). In this article, Cardi discussed two approaches to handling the problem. He concluded that the better of the two approaches is to exclude the immune party from apportionment. Id. at 1331-36. ¶ 17. When the Connecticut Supreme Court addressed the issue, it also found that exclusion of the immune party from apportionment was the best approach. The Court further found that its decision was consistent with the majority of other jurisdictions which have decided the issue. See Durniak v. August Winter & Sons, Inc., 222 Conn. 775, 610 A.2d 1277 (1992). We agree with the foregoing authorities that exclusion of the immune party from the apportionment process is the best approach. Therefore, we find this issue to be without merit.