Leger v. Drilling Well Control, Inc.

• Decision Date: 10 April 1979
• Docket Number: No. 77-1310,77-1310
• Citation: 592 F.2d 1246
• Parties: Raymond LEGER, Plaintiff-Appellee, Cross-Appellant, v. DRILLING WELL CONTROL, INC. et al., Defendants, Dresser Offshore Services, Inc., Defendant-Appellant, Cross-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 1246

592 F.2d 1246

Raymond LEGER, Plaintiff-Appellee, Cross-Appellant, v. DRILLING WELL CONTROL, INC. et al., Defendants, Dresser Offshore Services, Inc., Defendant-Appellant, Cross-Appellee.

No. 77-1310.

United States Court of Appeals,

Fifth Circuit.

April 10, 1979.

Richard E. Gerard, Jr., Lake Charles, La., for defendant-appellant, Dresser Offshore Services, Inc.

Bob F. Wright, Lafayette, La., Richard Putnam, Jr., Abbeville, La., for Raymond Leger.

John G. Torian, II, Lafayette, La., for Drilling Well Control Inc. et al.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.

Before GEWIN, HILL and FAY, Circuit Judges.

FAY, Circuit Judge:

Appellee, Raymond Leger, was injured while working aboard a barge owned by appellant Dresser Offshore Services, Inc. ("Dresser"). At the time of the accident, Leger was employed by Drilling Well Control, Inc. ("DWC"), a service company which specialized in the control of high pressure oil wells. Dresser was using the barge in a workover operation on an offshore oil well owned by Continental Oil Company ("Continental"). DWC was called to the well site by Continental to correct technical difficulties which Continental and Dresser were encountering in the workover operation. On March 21, 1969, Leger and two other DWC employees arrived by workboat at the barge. They brought with them a pipe and bottle rack to be used in the workover operation. After the pipe and bottle rack were unloaded from the workboat, Leger first asked John Bullard, the senior Continental representative aboard the vessel, for the use of the barge's crane in helping to unload the pipe from the bottle rack. Bullard refused, indicating that the crane was too busy at that time. Leger then asked Hilliard Guidry, a Dresser employee, for the use of the crane. Guidry also refused. Leger then began to unload the pipe by hand, and he sustained the injury which is the subject of this suit.

Leger filed suit against his employer, DWC, under the Jones Act and general maritime law and against Continental and Dresser under general maritime law. On the morning of the trial Leger settled his claims against DWC and Continental for a total of $182,331.05. The Travelers Insurance Company, which provided liability insurance for DWC and Continental, settled Leger's claim against DWC for $82,331.05 and Leger's claim against Continental for $100,000.00. Dresser's only issue on appeal is the effect of this settlement on the amount Leger was entitled to recover from Dresser. ¹

Leger's case against Dresser was tried twice. At the first trial, the jury found Leger's damages to be $284,090.00. The trial court and Dresser's counsel then learned that the release and indemnity agreement between Leger and Travelers Insurance Company provided that Travelers was to receive one-half of any funds actually collected by Leger from Dresser, whether the funds were collected as a result of judgment or settlement. The trial court granted Dresser's motion for a new trial on the ground that the jury should have been informed that DWC and Continental were originally defendants, that Leger had settled his claims against them, and that Travelers was to receive one-half of all sums received by Leger from Dresser. The court considered it necessary that the jury be aware of the continuing interest in the law suit of the various witnesses from DWC and Continental.

The issue at the new trial was limited to liability, since the additional information to be submitted to the jury would have no bearing on the amount of damages. Thus, Leger's damages remained fixed at $284,090.00. At the new trial the jury found the negligence of the parties as follows: Dresser 45%; Continental 20%; DWC 0%; and Leger 35% Contributory negligence. Dresser filed a motion to alter the judgment, requesting that the court afford Dresser a credit against the judgment for the full dollar amount of the settlement ($182,331.05) between Leger, DWC, and Continental. The motion was denied, and the court, in accord with rules hereafter discussed, entered judgment against Dresser for $127,840.00. That amount reflects the total damages of $284,090.00 reduced by.$99,430.17 representing the 35% Contributory negligence of the plaintiff and by $56,817.24 representing the 20% Negligence attributed to Continental. No reduction in the judgment was made for DWC's settlement since DWC was found not to be negligent. To put it another way, Dresser was charged by the judgment to pay only the portion of the total damages proportionate to its percentage of negligence (45% Of $284,090.00).

The rules employed by Judge Hunter to determine the amount of credit against the judgment were derived from the following principles:

(1) Where the concurrent fault of two or more persons combine to produce injury, the parties at fault are joint tortfeasors and, as such, are liable to the injured plaintiff. ²

(2) The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have liberalized joinder ³ and impleader rules in maritime claims to facilitate the presence of all interested parties in one action. All potential joint tortfeasors may be made third party defendants, pursuant to Rule 14(c). Application of the Rule in this manner is the only possible interpretation of it consistent with its purpose and intent.

(3) Where there are two or more defendants (alleged joint tortfeasors), and the plaintiff settles with and grants a release as to one or more of them, reserving his rights against the remaining, the settling defendants are relieved of any further liability to the plaintiff. ⁴

(4) When two or more parties have contributed by their fault to cause injury to another, the liability for such damage is to be allocated among the parties proportionately to the comparative degree of their fault. ⁵

(5) A tortfeasor seeking to assert a reduction by the degree of fault of alleged joint tortfeasors must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the settling defendant was, in fact, at fault. ⁶

(6) A settling party's negligence is considered only when he has been made a party to the suit. In such a case, the judgment awarded to the claimant against the nonsettling defendant is credited with the dollar amount represented by the proportion of negligence, if any, attributed to the settling parties.

Leger v. Drilling Well Control, Inc., 69 F.R.D. 358, 362-63 (W.D.La.1975) (original footnotes omitted). While Dresser concedes the validity of the first five Leger principles, it argues with respect to the sixth that "where two of the original defendants have settled with the plaintiff for more than would have been their pro rata share of the total damages awarded to the plaintiff, the application of the doctrine of comparative fault constitutes an abuse of discretion in that it allows double recovery in favor of the plaintiff." We do not agree.

Judge Hunter's able opinion is in full accord with recent Supreme Court decisions in this area. The Supreme Court clarified in Cooper Stevedoring Co. v. Kopke, 417 U.S. 106, 94 S.Ct. 2174, 40 L.Ed.2d 694 (1974) that there no longer exists a blanket prohibition against contribution in non-collision cases. The Court left open the question of whether contribution should be "based on an equal division of damages or should be relatively apportioned in accordance with the degree of fault of the parties." Id. at 108 n.3, 94 S.Ct. at 2176 n.3. In United States v. Reliable Transfer Co.,421 U.S. 397, 95 S.Ct. 1708, 44 L.Ed.2d 251 (1975), the Court seems to have answered the question by holding that, where the plaintiff and the defendant in a maritime collision case are both partly responsible for an accident, "liability for such damage is to be allocated among the parties proportionately to the comparative degree of their fault . . . ." Id. at 411, 95 S.Ct. at 1716. The Court reasoned that it is unfair to allocate damages equally where fault was not equal. In addition, "(a) rule that divides damages by degree of fault would seem better designed to induce care . . . because it imposes the strongest deterrent upon the wrongful behavior that is most likely to cause harm." Id. at 405 n.11, 95 S.Ct. at 1713 n.11. The reasoning of Reliable Transfer loses none of its cogency in the context of a non-collision personal injury case. See Harrison v. Flota Mercante Grancolombiana, S.A., 577 F.2d 968, 982 (5th Cir. 1978); Griffith v. Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel Corp., 521 F.2d 31, 44 (3d Cir. 1975), Cert. denied, 423 U.S. 1054, 96 S.Ct. 785, 46 L.Ed.2d 643. Likewise, we can see no basis for rejecting the Reliable Transfer reasoning simply because one or more of the potential defendants has settled with the injured party. Thus, Leger represents a sound and logical application of the Supreme Court's decisions in Cooper and Reliable Transfer.

Intervening cases justify our departure from prior case law in this area. See Billiot v. Stewart Seacraft Inc., 382 F.2d 662 (5th Cir. 1967); Loffland Brothers Co. v. Huckabee, 373 F.2d 528 (5th Cir. 1967). The prior rule, as enunciated in Billiot and Loffland, provided that, where one jointly negligent maritime defendant had settled before trial, the injured party could recover from the remaining defendant an amount determined by reducing the total damages by the amount of the settlement. This method was designed to prevent the plaintiff from receiving a double recovery for his injuries. In our view, the Leger rules accommodate the interests of fairness and deterrence without sacrificing the policy against double recovery upon which Billiot and Loffland were founded. ⁷

In this case, Leger did not receive a double recovery for his injuries. In accord with its ground rules, the trial court rendered judgment against Dresser for $127,840.00, representing Dresser's percentage of negligence (45%) multiplied by Leger's damages as found by the jury ($284,090.00). ⁸ Although Leger nominally received $310,171.05 by virtue of the settlement and the judgment, we...