Opinion ID: 2367472
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Failure to apportion damages between defendants.

Text: The defendants brief the proposition that the jury's verdict, as rendered, is fatally defective for failure to apportion damages between plaintiff and defendants, and for failure to apportion damages between the two defendants. Each such apportionment they claim to be required by 12 V.S.A. § 1036. Again, the simple answer to these contentions is that they were not raised below and are therefore waived. Pope v. Town of Windsor, supra . But, even if raised below, the contentions would be without merit here. The defendants admit that the court's charge correctly and adequately covered the points they have raised. They assert, however, that the law requires the submission of the interrogatories contemplated by V.R.C.P. 49(b). Such is not the case; the language of the rule is permissive. And 12 V.S.A. § 1036, by its terms, requires a general verdict. In comparative negligence cases, the use of special interrogatories is indeed to be commended, but their omission is not reversible error when the charge is correct. We cannot assume, as the defendants would have us do, that the jury failed to follow the instructions as given. Moreover, as to apportionment between the individual defendants, we do not require performance of a useless act. The purpose of the statutory requirement is clearly stated; it is to establish the ratio of the amount of his causal negligence to the amount of causal negligence attributed to all defendants against whom recovery is allowed. 12 V.S.A. § 1036. As we have already pointed out, under respondeat superior the negligence of the servant becomes that of the master; they are identical. There is no ratio between them to be established by verdict. The legislature has not, as defendants argue, rejected the concept of joint and several liability among co-defendants in favor of apportioning recovery in relation to the relative negligence of the parties. The apportionment required is among joint tortfeasors, and that is not the basis for recovery in the instant action. The assumption implicit in the argument, that the two terms may be equated, is simply not the fact.