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Stratton v. Parker6/28/1990
In a personal injury action against joint tort-feasors in which one of them settled the claim before trial and the other went to trial, the question presented is whether the nonsettling defendant is entitled to credit on the judgment against him of the amount paid by the settling defendant when the jury determined that the settling defendant's percentage of causation of the plaintiff's injury was zero.
The appellant, Marvin Douglas Stratton, was injured in a motor vehicle accident. He claimed damages against the appellee, Bruce Parker, Johnson Investments, Inc., and The Keeneland Association. The claim against The Keeneland Association was dismissed by summary judgment prior to trial.
The defendant, Johnson Investments, Inc., settled the claim against it before trial, and the case was ordered to proceed against appellee Parker with Johnson Investments, Inc. to be treated as a settling tort-feasor.
The alleged negligence of appellee Parker, the alleged negligence of the settling defendant Johnson Investments, Inc., and the alleged contributory negligence of the appellant Stratton was submitted to the jury under an apportionment instruction for the assessment of the amount of the total damages to Stratton resulting from his injury, and for the assessment of the degree of legal causation, if any, attributable to appellee Parker, to Johnson Investments, Inc., and to Stratton himself.
The jury attributed 25% of the legal causation to Parker, 75% to Stratton, and 0% to Johnson Investments, Inc. The trial judge, thereupon, entered a judgment for Stratton against Parker for 25% of the total damages found by the jury. Parker then sought credit on the judgment against him of the amount which Johnson Investments, Inc. had paid to Stratton in settlement of Stratton's claim against it. The trial judge allowed the credit, and the Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment.
We granted discretionary review and now reverse.
Under common law in Kentucky, a judgment against joint tort-feasors imposed joint and several liability. The plaintiff could enforce his judgment against either of the tort-feasors or against all of them. To prevent double recovery, any amount collected from one defendant was credited to the other.
Because it was generally thought to be impossible to divide a single indivisible injury into parts and to determine which part each of the joint tort-feasors was responsible for, the common law held each of them responsible to the injured party for the entire injury. By like token, an injured party whose negligence contributed to his own indivisible injury was barred from recovery because of his contributory negligence.
Some states, while recognizing that a single injury is indivisible, have adopted the concept that the degree of legal causation of the injury attributable to each of jointly and concurrently negligent persons is capable of determination. See Prosser & Keaton on the Law of Torts, Ch. 11, Sec. 67, (5th ed.) It follows that since it is possible to allocate among tort-feasors the degree of percentage of legal causation of an injury which is attributable to each of them, the liability of each may be made to depend upon the degree of fault of each. This is required by statute in Kansas, Oklahoma, Ohio, New Hampshire, and Vermont. See Speiser, Krause and Gans, The American Law of Torts, Vol. 1, Chapter 3 Sec. 11, Multiple Tort-feasors.
The departure from the common law legal concept of joint and several liability was first recognized in Kentucky by the enactment of K.R.S. 454.040 which provides that in a trespass action a jury may assess several damages, and that when
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