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Kiss v. Jacob12/14/1994
rt victim to retain collateral benefits -- that is, benefits that do not come from a defendant -- in addition to any amount that the victim might recover from that defendant. The effect of the rule is to deny a wrongdoer the benefit of any rights that the victim might have against other entities based on contract, employment, or some other relation. Patusco v. Prince Macaroni, Inc., 50 N.J. 365, 368, 235 A.2d 465 (1967). The premise of the rule is that "it should not concern the tortfeasor that someone else is obligated to aid his victim because of a duty assumed by contract or imposed by law," ibid., and that "an injured party may recover fully from a tortfeasor for personal injuries notwithstanding that much of his loss was covered by contractual arrangements, such as for example an accident or life insurance policy." Theobald v. Angelos, 44 N.J. 228, 239, 208 A.2d 129 (1965).
In 1987 the Legislature enacted the following collateral-source rule:
In any civil action brought for personal injury or death, except actions brought pursuant to the provisions of P.L. 1972, c. 70 (C. 39:6A-1 et seq.) [the No-Fault law], if a plaintiff receives or is entitled to receive benefits for the injuries allegedly incurred from any other source other than a joint tortfeasor, the benefits, other than workers' compensation benefits or the proceeds from a life insurance policy, shall be disclosed to the court and the amount thereof which duplicates any benefit contained in the award shall be deducted from any award recovered by the plaintiff, less any premium paid to an insurer directly by the plaintiff or by any member of the plaintiff's family on behalf of the plaintiff for the policy period during which the benefits are payable. Any party to the action shall be permitted to introduce evidence regarding any of the matters described in this act.
[N.J.S.A. 2A:15-97 (emphasis added).]
The question before us is whether, as the Appellate Division held, "benefits" as used in the statute include the proceeds of a plaintiff's settlement with a defendant later found to bear no
liability. We think not. Although the arguments of the parties and the Appellate Division's comprehensive treatment of the issue rest on long-standing principles of statutory construction and refer to the Legislature's treatment of "other than a joint tortfeasor" in other enactments, and to New York's treatment of its collateral-source rule, and to public-policy considerations, 268 N.J. Super. at 246-50 & n.5, we believe that the legislative history, the language of the statute, and the desirability of coordinating the collateral-source statute with the Comparative Negligence Act, N.J.S.A. 2A:15-5.1 to -5.8, overcome the force of any contrary arguments.
We start by recalling that traditionally the types of benefits contemplated by the common-law collateral-source rule include those from life- or health-insurance policies, from employment contracts, from statutes such as worker's compensation acts and the Federal Employers' Liability Act, from gratuities, from social legislation such as social security and welfare, and from pensions under special retirement acts. Restatement(Second) of Torts ยง 920A comment c (1979). That those are the types of "benefits" on which the Legislature focused in N.J.S.A. 2A:15-97, in an effort to control spiralling automobile-insurance costs, is apparent from the statement of the Assembly Insurance Committee to the Senate bill that produced the statute:
This bill is intended to prohibit duplicate recov
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