Victims of personal injury must be aware of a concept called joint and several liability. Under this concept, two or more parties can be held responsible for paying the full amount of damages owed to the victim, even if they aren’t 100% responsible for the accident.

The way this law is applied changes depending on the circumstances. If you’ve been injured and there are multiple parties involved, hiring a law firm like Blakeley Law Firm, P.A., can help you determine the liable party in your case.

Joint and Several Liability

Joint and several liability is a rule followed in some states in which two or more parties can be held independently liable for the full amount of a victim’s damages, regardless of their respective degrees of fault.

Alabama and Delaware follow this pure joint and several liability, which means that defendants can be held accountable for 100% of the victim’s compensation, even if they aren’t fully responsible for the accident.

By contrast, states like Georgia follow pure several liability, where defendants are only required to pay for the damage they caused.

This law can be applied to any personal injury claim where multiple parties are involved like:

• Motor vehicle accidents
• Defective products
• Workplace accidents

Advantages of joint and several liability

The joint and several liability law provides benefits to both defendants and plaintiffs.

Firstly, the purpose of this law is to ensure that a victim of negligence receives compensation. Usually, if a defendant is unable to pay compensation, the victim cannot pursue a personal injury claim against them.

There may be several reasons the defendant is unable to pay, including bankruptcy, not having adequate insurance coverage, or insolvency. You can’t make someone pay when they have no money! As a result, the victim not only suffers damage due to injury but also loses additional costs in legal fees.

Secondly, the law reduces the burden on defendants to pay compensation. If one of the defendants is unable to pay, the other defendants can take on the financial burden. The way the law works is that instead of asking defendants to pay only to the degree they are responsible, those with the financial means are expected to pay full compensation.

This way, the victim receives the compensation they’re owed instead of walking away empty-handed.

It is important to note, however, that if none of the defendants are capable of paying, the victim receives no compensation. The legal term for this is “the defendant is judgment proof.”

This law applies only in cases where there are multiple defendants. It is not practiced in full in most states; that is, defendants are not required to pay an amount that is severely disproportional to the damage they’ve caused.

States may also only ask defendants who are more than 50% responsible for the accident to pay in situations where other defendants are unable to do so.

Criticism of the law

The doctrine of joint and several liability has been criticized for unfairly burdening defendants with a situation they did not fully cause.

For example, if four people were involved in a car crash, and all of them were deemed responsible in some way, but only three of them were required to pay as one of the defendants was bankrupt, it would put an unfair burden on the others to pay for more than their share, which may cause them undue financial distress.

Conclusion

The joint and several liability law aims to ensure that the plaintiff receives compensation. However, it has come under fire for placing unfair burden on defendants. It is important to note that most states only follow a hybrid version of this law. Hiring a lawyer can provide clarity on how this law applies to your case.