Court Opinion

ID: 8963571
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-27 09:52:21.860566+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:10:15.540028
License: Public Domain

LAY, Chief Judge,
concurring and dissenting.
I generally concur in the opinion of the court. I take one major exception to the opinion. The district court found that the liability of the parties should be apportioned seventy-five percent for the state and twenty-five percent for the school district, but specifically held that liability was based upon a finding of joint and several tortfeasors.
The state appealed the apportionment of liability to this court. However, it has never appealed the district court’s original judgment of joint and several liability. I do not fault counsel because it would be difficult absent a divisible injury under traditional legal principles to dispute the validity of such a holding.
This court’s opinion has appropriately discussed how the state has “so narrowly circumscribe[d] KCMSD’s duty to raise money” and that as a partial result therefrom it is a practical reality that the school district cannot fully contribute to the funding of the remedial program to meet constitutional compliance. Under the circumstances traditional legal principles apply. I would simply hold that under a judgment of joint and several liability that upon failure of one tortfeasor to comply with the judgment because of financial inability to fund the remedial plan that any other tort-feasor may be liable for the whole. As the Supreme Court indicated in Edmonds, cited in the court’s opinion, quoting from the Second Restatement of Torts:
A tortfeasor is not relieved of liability for the entire harm he caused just because another’s negligence was also a factor in effecting the injury. “Nor are the damages against him diminished.” Restatement, [Second] supra, § 879, Comment a. Likewise, under traditional tort law, a plaintiff obtaining a judgment against more than one concurrent tort-feasor may satisfy it against any one of them. Id., § 886. A concurrent tort-feasor generally may seek contribution from another, id., § 886A, but he is not relieved from liability for the entire damages even when the nondefendant tort-feasor is immune from liability. Id., § 880. These principles, of course, are inapplicable where the injury is divisible and the causation of each part can be separately assigned to each tortfeasor. Id., §§ 433A(1) and 881.
Edmonds, 443 U.S. at 260-61 n. 8, 99 S.Ct. at 2756 n. 8.
I do not doubt the constitutional authority of the district court as approved in Lid-dell VII to exercise the remedial order necessary to bring about constitutional compliance. However, a judicial decree requiring increase in local levies on real estate and the imposition of a property tax should “be exercised only after exploration of every other fiscal alternative.” Liddell VII, 731 F.2d at 1320. Thus, I do not feel that it was necessary for the district court or feasible for this court to approve a property tax levy by KCMSD to meet its fiscal responsibility. Where other alternatives remain, it is the very essence of judicial restraint not to go beyond the relief necessary. The State of Missouri should therefore pay for any amount KCMSD is unable to contribute, failing existing means by KCMSD to raise the monies in order to effectuate constitutional compliance. The state may under existing law seek contributions from the KCMSD but this problem is between the parties and not for the court. I therefore would set aside the property tax levy ordered by the district court and use existing legal principles to effect constitutional compliance by holding the state liable for any deficiency KCMSD cannot contribute under the plan.