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Restore Joint and Several Liability

Oct 27, 2014 - Personal Injury by

Many readers, unless they have a legal background, will have no idea what “restore joint and several liability” means. Joint and several liability is an old concept that basically held that if two people, both negligent, injured a third person, then both people will be fully responsible for the injured person’s damages no matter how much, or little, they each contributed to the injury. In other words, if two people acted negligently, one in a small way and one in a big way, and together they injured another person… then the injured person could sue either or both for all of his damages. The fact that one person contributed only slightly to injure the person was irrelevant.

The purpose with joint and several liability was to make sure the injured person was fully compensated. If one of the wrong doers had more assets or money, then the injured party could sue that person and get fully compensated.

The law realized that sometimes it did an injustice to one of the negligent parties making them pay more than their share of negligence. However, the law also recognized that the injured person needed to be fully compensated. Better the negligent party overpay their share than the injured party be denied full compensation.

In more recent years, as legislatures and courts have become more sympathetic to large corporations, insurance companies, and other powerful interests, the theory of joint and several liability has begun to disappear. As a result, some truly injured people are being denied fair compensation.

Two examples are in cases involving inadequate security and drunk drivers leaving bars. Traditionally, under joint and several liability, if a bar over-served a customer and that customer left drunk and caused an accident, both the drunk driver and the bar would be fully liable for the damages they jointly caused. With tort reform however, joint and several liability has been eliminated and now the jury must apportion fault and damages between the drunk driver and the careless bar.

In the case of the drunk driver and the bar, the jury tends to put most, if not all the fault on the drunk driver. The drunk driver is often underinsured or uninsured. The result is that a tragically injured person is left uncompensated, because one wrong doer has no money but the other wrong doer, the bar, escapes responsibility.

The same is true in cases involving inadequate security. For example, a parking lot owner or a mall owner decides to cut corners and not have adequate security. As a result, a customer is robbed or killed. Again, both the robber and the mall or premises owner contributed to the customer’s injuries; however, when the jury compares the fault between a criminal and a mall or property owner… most, if not all, the fault is generally placed on the criminal.  Again, the criminal often has no insurance or assets to compensate the injured customer. The negligent mall owner escapes all responsibility, because fault is put on the criminal.

In these cases, both parties should be held jointly responsible for the damages they caused to the injured party. To do otherwise results in some wrong doers escaping responsibility and the truly injured person receiving little or no compensation.

If you, or someone you know, have been seriously injured… call the personal injury lawyers of Roberts and Roberts. For nearly 30 years, the injury attorneys of Roberts and Roberts have been helping people injured in car wrecks, truck and 18 wheeler collisions, and motorcycle accidents. The call costs you nothing… it could mean everything.

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