Court Opinion

ID: 9522083
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:17:37.222929+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:02:16.293124
License: Public Domain

Cohen, Supr. J.,
¶ 90. Specially Assigned, concurring. I concur fully in the Court’s conclusion that reinstatement of the Club’s corporate charter nineteen years after it was revoked and eleven years after the Club discriminated on the basis of gender should not operate retroactively to immunize individual members from liability for the discrimination. Having chosen for whatever reason to abandon their protection from individual liability until only a few short months after the discrimination judgment became final, the members’ belated invocation of the corporate shield rings distinctly hollow. I cannot therefore, join in the dissent, which in my view effectively rewards such dilatory conduct by reinstating the corporate shield with no consideration of the surrounding circumstances.
¶ 91. It is the individual Club members who in this case should bear the cost of the discrimination, not the women wrongfully deprived of membership. Accordingly, I also concur in the Court’s holding that the Club’s creditors are statutorily authorized under *16012 V.S.A. § 5060 to collect from the individual members, who remain “jointly and severally liable and may be sued individually or together” on the debt. Ante, ¶ 45.
¶ 92. I write separately, however, because in my view it is essential to take the decision one step farther. The result of today’s ruling is that creditors may collect the entire judgment from any one or all of the members. See State v. Therrien, 2003 VT 44, ¶ 24, 175 Vt. 342, 830 A.2d 28 (joint and several liability means that each tortfeasor may be “held liable for the entire result” and that the plaintiff may “determine which tortfeasor to pursue for recovery” (quotation omitted)). Under the common law rule prohibiting contribution among joint tortfeasors, this also means that relatively wealthier Club members — even if only casually involved in Club activities — may be required to pay a significantly disproportionate share of the judgment regardless of fault. See Swett v. Haig’s, Inc., 164 Vt. 1, 5, 663 A.2d 930, 932 (1995) (observing that the Court has consistently rejected the right of contribution among joint tortfeasors). Although the Court readily acknowledges the potential' inequity, it concludes that its hands are tied. As the Court explains, “the possibility of visiting liability on a mostly inactive Club member . . . seems an inappropriate result,” but any remedy, the Court concludes, must be afforded by legislative action. Ante, ¶ 55 (emphasis added).
¶ 93. With respect, I do not agree that the Court is powerless to address this inequity. The inherent injustice in requiring one of several joint tortfeasors to pay more than his or her fair share of a judgment has been widely recognized. See generally J. Dillbary, Apportioning Liability Behind a Veil of Uncertainty, 62 Hastings L.J. 1729, 1731 (2011) (noting that “[t]he rule of joint and several liability . . . with no contribution has been lamented by scholars and policy makers as unjust, immoral, inefficient, and inequitable”). As a result, most states have adopted some form of contribution among joint tortfeasors, generally either by equal shares or shares proportionate to fault. Id. at 1732 (“Due to the fairness-between-tortfeasors concern, the majority of states allows some form of contribution based on pro-rata or fault.”).
¶ 94. Many states, to be sure, have modified the rule against contribution by means of legislative action. See S. Randall, Only in Alabama: A Modest Tort Agenda, 60 Ala. L. Rev. 977, 979 (2009) (listing the states that have enacted legislation, often modeled on the Uniform Contribution Among Tortfeasors Act,
*161providing for contribution). The rule against contribution is a common law construct, however, and as such is also subject to judicial revision. See Swett, 164 Vt. at 5, 663 A.2d at 932 (noting that “contribution is unavailable under the common-law rule”); Hiltz v. John Deere Indus. Equip. Co., 146 Vt. 12, 15, 497 A.2d 748, 751-52 (1985) (declining to reexamine “the common law rule barring contribution among joint tortfeasors” because it was unnecessary to address the issue on the facts presented). As the Supreme Court of Alaska has observed, in many states contribution is statutory, “[b]ut in a substantial number of states contribution has been developed as a matter of common law.” McLaughlin v. Lougee, 137 P.3d 267, 277 (Alaska 2006). Indeed, many of the first states to modify the rule did so through court action, impelled by the “obvious lack of sense and justice in a rule which permits the entire burden of a loss ... to be shouldered onto one [tortfeasor] alone, according to the accident of a successful levy of execution, the plaintiffs whim or malevolence, or his collusion with the other wrongdoer.” Davis v. Broad St. Garage, 232 S.W.2d 355, 357 (Tenn. 1950) (quotation omitted); see generally Bielski v. Schulze, 114 N.W.2d 105, 108 n.2 (Wis. 1962) (listing states that led the way in recognizing the doctrine of contribution by court decision).
¶ 95. I recognize that the Court declined to abrogate the rule against contribution among joint tortfeasors in Howard v. Spafford, which relied on a similar preference for legislative over judicial action. 132 Vt. 434, 436-38, 321 A.2d 74, 75-77 (1974) (holding that the availability of various contribution schemes and the “complexities” surrounding the rule made reform “more appropriate for legislative than judicial consideration”); see also Levine v. Wyeth, 2006 VT 107, ¶ 39, 183 Vt. 76, 944 A.2d 179 (citing Howard in declining to require apportionment of negligence between drug manufacturer and hospital). It is hardly surprising, therefore, that none of the parties here have raised or briefed this issue.
¶ 96. Nevertheless, in my view Howard was wrong to opt for inaction on the basis merely of the issue’s complexity, and in any event the issue is clearly ripe ■— after nearly forty years ■— for reconsideration. See Hay v. Med. Ctr. Hosp. of Vt., 145 Vt. 533, 543, 496 A.2d 939, 945 (1985) (recognizing Court’s duty to modify “outmoded common law concepts” even where a subject presents “difficult and complex” social or economic issues). Whether the *162Court decides for pro rata or proportionate contribution among joint tortfeasors is less important than that it decides for contribution, and the Legislature may always step in if it disagrees with the Court’s choice.
¶ 97. Accordingly, while I concur in today’s decision, I would extend it to recognize a right of contribution among the individual Club members held liable on the judgment.