Court Opinion

ID: 9444845
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:14:09.564574+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:02.190462
License: Public Domain

BROWN, Circuit Judge
(specially concurring).
I concur in the result and all that is so ably stated down to the point of contribution. Having denied indemnity because the railroad breached a duty owing *313to Haymes, this is an ample basis for denying contribution under the Texas Statute, Article 2212, Vernon’s Texas Civil Statutes, or the common law reserved by its terms. What has been said of the statute, “It would not be within the spirit of this statute to allow a right of contribution in favor of a tort-feasor where the event which brought about the injury resulted from his violation of a duty which he owed to the other tort-feasor from whom contribution is sought”, Wheeler v. Glazer, 137 Tex. 341, 153 S.W.2d 449, 452, 140 A.L.R. 1301, would apply to non-statutory contribution.
Texas has not yet voiced a policy that a right of contribution otherwise existing is unavailable because the original plaintiff could not have recovered from the co-tort-feasor. Until it does, we ought not to forge such a doctrine out of analogous material so weak as Patterson v. Tomlinson, Tex.Civ.App., 118 S.W.2d 645. The decision on this point should await full exploration of the factors bearing upon it, not the least of which is that modern concepts of indemnity and contribution seek to apportion the total loss on those who bring it about in fact. It is the loss, measured sometimes by the judgment which the one has been required to pay, which is to be shared. It has been sustained because of the joint wrongs of several. It is no less because a bar, statutory or otherwise, denies recovery as between a plaintiff and one of the defendants. The allowance does not defeat the policy of non-liability reflected by such bar since the obligation of one co-tort-feasor to the other springs entirely from a different source — the duty to each other and the violation of it. The policy of apportionment of loss is as vital as the policy of non-liability. This collision of policy is for Texas to decide. See Otis Elevator Co. v. Cameron, Tex.Civ.App., 205 S.W. 852.
If the right, because of this assumed impediment, did not exist at common law, then the statute, Art. 2212, comes into play and Wheeler v. Glazer, supra, mot the impediment, supplies the answer.