Court Opinion

ID: 9676632
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:29:04.966578+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:49.956512
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent.
The proper method for the Board of Claims to use in deciding this case would be to first decide if the State Department of Housing was negligent, and having so decided, to then decide the total damages each claimant sustained and then, in making the final award, deduct the previous payments in settlement made by the City Fire Department. This way the claimants would get paid exactly what they have coming to them, no more and no less. Under the Majority Opinion they are overcompensated.
We have gotten away from the age-old logic of the common law, which is to decide the plaintiff’s total damages and award compensation accordingly, to a different system wherein a plaintiff, who settles with one defendant and proceeds against another, is either overcompensated or un-dercompensated depending on how the fact-finder later apportions fault. This is Russian Roulette, not the comparative negligence principle espoused in Hilen v. Hays, Ky., 673 S.W.2d 713 (1984). Under Stratton v. Parker, Ky., 793 S.W.2d 817 (1990), one side or the other will invariably get a windfall.
We should overrule Stratton v. Parker and go back to the fundamental fairness found in the principles of joint and several liability. We should hold that where the plaintiff settles with one defendant and the case goes to trial against the remaining defendant, the trier of fact should decide whether this defendant’s negligence was a substantial contributing factor, and (if so found) decide what the total damages are. Then, on principles of equitable restitution, post-verdict the trial judge should deduct as a set-off amounts previously paid by any joint tortfeasor who has settled. When Orr v. Coleman, Ky., 455 S.W.2d 59 (1970) adopted a new approach, it was a new idea badly conceived without regard to preexisting law and how it would distort principles of just payment and compensation. Nix v. Jordan, Ky., 532 S.W.2d 762 (1975), followed the former principle of not applying apportionment to cases where the plaintiff proceeded to trial against only one defendant. We should apply it to the present situation.
On a different note: I agree that the Board erred in calculating damages for destruction of Simms’ real estate improvements, and this issue was properly reversed and remanded back to the Board to *171retry. But I disagree that on retrial the Board is limited to the evidence offered at the first trial. A retrial on damages contemplates a decision based on the evidence introduced at the retrial, not the last trial, including any new evidence offered on the issue.