How does the presence of multiple defendants affect my recovery?

On behalf of Aiken and Aiken P.C. Personal Injury Attorneys posted in Car Accidents, on Sunday, August 16, 2015

Accidents can be messy things. And part of what can make them that way is that often when we examine who was at fault for causing the accident and the subsequent injuries to your person and to your property, more than one person or entity qualifies. For example, think of a situation in which you are involved in an accident with a commercial truck. The driver was not paying attention and rearВ­ended you. On further investigation, you learn that he was not properly trained to drive the vehicle that he was in. Looking deeper, you discover that part of the reason he rearВ­ended your car was because the truck’s brakes were defectively designed and did not work properly.So, when we consider possible defendants in a negligenceВ­based action for personal injury, there is the driver… the company that employs him… and the company that designed the defective brake system. Should you leave any of them out in the lawsuit? No. Especially if your injuries are severe, you will likely have a substantial claim for money damages. And the more defendants you include in the lawsuit, the more likely it is that among them (and their insurers) there will be enough money to pay. This is the essence of “joint and several liability.” Massachusetts in one state that allows for this form of liability in its “pure” form. What this means is that in our example above, you could hold any one of the three defendants liable for the entire amount of your damages award, or you could collect against all of them (other states have modified joint and several liability so that an individual defendant is liable only for his or her percentage of fault).So if the truck driver has little or no money, and his employer is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, you could still collect the entire award against the defective brake manufacturer. If that manufacturer objects to paying all of the damages, it can seek “contribution” from the other defendants – but that is not your problem.Identifying all possible defendants in a matter such as a c​ar accident is a key part of a plaintiff attorney’s job in preparing a legal claim for settlement or trial, so that the legal theory of joint and several liability can work to ensure that you can receive all of the compensation to which you are entitled for your injuries and property damage.