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Torres v. Xomox Corp.8/30/1996
HANLON, J.
Maintenance worker Luis Torres died from burns he received at the Rhne-Poulenc chemical plant in Martinez on June 22, 1992, when he was doused with sulfuric acid sludge which escaped from a valve manufactured by Xomox Corporation (Xomox). His family filed a wrongful death and survival action against Xomox and Charles Lowe Company (Charles Lowe), the Xomox distributor which had sold the valve to Rhne-Poulenc. The Torres action was consolidated with the suit filed against Xomox and Charles Lowe by Richard Sornborger, another employee of Rhne-Poulenc who was injured in the accident.
A jury awarded damages to Sornborger and the Torres plaintiffs, and allocated comparative fault for the accident as follows: Rhne-Poulenc, 75 percent; Charles Lowe, 10 percent; Sornborger, 5 percent; Torres, 5 percent; and Xomox, 5 percent. After the verdict was rendered, Sornborger and the Torres plaintiffs settled with Charles Lowe, and Sornborger settled with Xomox. Judgment was entered for the Torres plaintiffs against Xomox, from which Xomox has appealed.
Xomox contends in the alternative that: (1) judgment must be entered in its favor because no reasonable trier of fact could conclude that its actions were a legal cause of the Torres plaintiffs' harm; (2) a new trial is required because evidence it sought to introduce was erroneously excluded; or (3) the judgment must be reduced because it was given insufficient credit for workers' compensation benefits and settlement proceeds the Torres plaintiffs received.
In the published portion of the opinion, we first conclude that the issue of causation was properly treated as a question of fact for the jury, and thus that Xomox was not entitled to judgment as a matter of law. In the unpublished portion of the opinion, we conclude that Xomox's evidentiary arguments lack merit and thus that Xomox is not entitled to a new trial. In the balance of the published opinion, we address two issues of apparent first impression under Proposition 51 (Civ. Code, ยง 1431.1-1431.5): the allocation of workers' compensation benefits, and the allocation of settlements reached after damages have been determined by the trier of fact ("post-verdict" settlements), between "economic" and "noneconomic" damages, as defined by Proposition 51.
We conclude that the proper method of allocating workers' compensation benefits under Proposition 51 is the same one that has been adopted for preverdict settlements in a line of cases beginning with Espinoza v. Machonga (1992) 9 Cal. App. 4th 268 [11 Cal. Rptr. 2d 498]. Under this " Espinoza " approach, workers' compensation benefits are to be allocated between economic and noneconomic damages in the same proportions as those damages are awarded by the trier of fact. Therefore, in this case, where 55.3 percent of the jury's award to the Torres plaintiffs was for economic damages, 55.3 percent of the workers' compensation benefits they received were correctly credited against the judgment for economic damages.
We conclude that the Espinoza approach is an inappropriate method of allocating postverdict settlements under Proposition 51, and that a different method, what we will call a "ceiling" approach, should be used. Under this ceiling approach, the amount of a postverdict settlement is to be allocated first to noneconomic damages, but only up to the amount of the settling defendant's liability for such damages under the verdict. The balance of the settlement, if any, is then to be credited against the judgment for economic damages. Application of the ceiling approach in this case reduces the judgment for the Torres plaintiffs by a portion of the settlement proceeds.
I. THE ACCID
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