Rozevink v. Faris

• Decision Date: 21 December 1983
• Docket Number: No. 83-512,83-512
• Citation: 342 N.W.2d 845
• Parties: Linda K. ROZEVINK, Appellee, v. James FARIS and Gayle E. Faris, Appellants, and James R. Mundell and Brian Freeze, Appellees.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

Page 845

342 N.W.2d 845

Linda K. ROZEVINK, Appellee, v. James FARIS and Gayle E. Faris, Appellants, and James R. Mundell and Brian Freeze, Appellees.

No. 83-512.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Dec. 21, 1983.

John B. Grier, of Cartwright, Druker & Ryden, Marshalltown, for appellants.

James C. Wilson, K. Allan Voss, of Wilson, Hall, Wilson & Craig, Eldora, for appellee Linda K. Rozevink.

Barker, McNeal, Wiese & Hold, Iowa Falls, for appellees James R. Mundell and Brian E. Freese.

Considered en banc.

WOLLE, Justice.

This appeal raises the question whether the doctrine of joint and several liability in Iowa is affected by this court's recent adoption of comparative negligence. We hold that it is not. The trial court correctly held that the defendants were jointly and severally liable to plaintiff for damages caused by their combined negligence.

Plaintiff Linda Rozevink was injured while riding on a motorcycle owned by Brian Freese and driven by James Mundell. The motorcycle was following a pickup truck that was owned by James and Gayle Faris and driven by Gayle Faris. Mundell attempted to pass the pickup truck on the right. Faris, however, made a turn to the right and collided with the motorcycle. As a result, plaintiff sustained personal injuries and commenced this negligence action against the owners and operators of both vehicles.

None of the defendants alleged that the plaintiff was negligent. The Farises, however, by amendment to their answer alleged that they should be held liable at most for that percentage of the total negligence which was attributable to their actions. The trial court granted the plaintiff's motion to strike that allegation, but at the Farises' request the court did submit to the jury the following special interrogatory:

Taking the combined negligence which caused the accident to be 100 percent, what percentage of the total negligence is attributable to:

1. The Defendant Gayle E. Faris __________

2. The Defendant Brian E. Freese __________

The jury returned a verdict for plaintiff and against all defendants in the amount of $27,611.31. Answering the special interrogatory, the jury assigned to Gayle Faris 17% of the total negligence and to Brian Freese 83% of the negligence. In their post-trial motions the Farises urged the trial court to enter judgment against them for only 17% of the plaintiff's damage award. The trial court, however, relied on traditional principles of Iowa law and decisions from other jurisdictions in holding the Farises jointly and severally liable. It is Farises' appeal from that ruling that presents the only issue now before us. Farises advocate a change from the doctrine of joint and several liability to a pure allocation of liability based on proportionate fault.

I. Background and Basis for the Doctrine.

Defendants who act in concert may be joint tortfeasors; so may those whose tortious conduct has contributed to causing a single, indivisible injury. A number of legal consequences may flow from a finding that defendants are joint tortfeasors. The consequences of that finding have varied as different jurisdictions have applied in traditional or modified form three common law rules: first, the rule that the release of one joint tortfeasor released all; second, the rule that prohibited contribution between joint tortfeasors; and third, the rule that each joint tortfeasor was jointly and severally liable for a plaintiff's entire loss. See generally V. Schwartz, Comparative Negligence § 16.3 (1974); W. Prosser, Law of Torts §§ 46-50 (4th ed. 1971).

Iowa cases have modified the first two rules. See Community School District of Postville v. Gordon E. Peterson, Inc., 176 N.W.2d 169, 175 (Iowa 1970) (release of one tortfeasor only releases all if parties so intend); Best v. Yerkes, 247 Iowa 800, 805-10, 77 N.W.2d 23, 27-29 (1956) (permitting equitable contribution between joint tortfeasors). Farises now urge that we change the third common law rule.

Our court initially approved the doctrine of joint and several liability in Turner v. Hitchcock, 20 Iowa 310 (1866), a case adopting the rule that the release of one joint tortfeasor releases all. In Turner a saloon owner brought suit against several women who had entered and damaged his establishment. Before the suit was filed, the plaintiff married one of the women; she was not named as a defendant. The defendants argued as a defense that the plaintiff had released one of the tortfeasors, his wife, and since the women were joint tortfeasors the defendants were also released. In deciding the case, the court first noted that the defendants were joint tortfeasors, stating:

Although the liability is thus separate as well as joint, the injury sued for is an entirety. The injury is single, though the wrong-doers may be numerous.

20 Iowa at 316 (emphasis in original). The court held that the marriage of the plaintiff to one of the joint tortfeasors satisfied and discharged his cause of action against his wife and thereby discharged the cause of action against all the defendants, explaining:

The injury to the plaintiff was a unit, single, and entire, for which he is entitled to but one satisfaction. "Each joint trespasser being ... liable to the extent of the injury done by all, it follows as a necessary consequence, that a satisfaction made by one, for his liability, operates as a satisfaction for the whole trespass, and a discharge of all concerned."

20 Iowa at 319 (emphasis in original) (quoting Ellis v. Betzer, 2 Ohio 89).

In 1929, our court held that the doctrine of joint and several liability applies when two separate negligent actions combine to cause a plaintiff's injuries. McDonald v. Robinson, 207 Iowa 1293, 224 N.W. 820 (1929). In McDonald, two cars collided, interlocked, and slid into a pedestrian. The injured pedestrian sued both drivers. One defendant contended on appeal that joint and several liability was inapplicable unless the defendants acted in concert, with a common intent or purpose. Our court disagreed, holding:

If the acts of two or more persons concur in contributing to and causing an accident, and but for such a concurrence the accident would not have happened, the injured person may sue the actors jointly or severally, and recover against one or all, according to the proven or admitted facts of the case.... The injury in this case was indivisible. There was no possible way by which it could be said that the negligence of one or of the other of the defendants was the sole proximate cause thereof.

207 Iowa at 1295-97, 224 N.W. at 821-22. Accord Drake v. Keeling, 230 Iowa 1038, 1050, 299 N.W. 919, 925 (1941).

Thus, joint and several liability in Iowa is based on the concept that ordinarily personal injuries are indivisible and not apportionable among defendants whose negligence has been their proximate cause. As William Prosser has explained:

Where a logical basis can be found for some rough practical apportionment, which limits a defendant's liability to that part of the harm which he has in fact caused, it may be expected that the division will be made. Where no such basis can be found, and any division must be purely arbitrary, there is no practical course except to hold the defendant for the entire loss, notwithstanding the fact that other causes have contributed to it.

The distinction is one between injuries which are reasonably capable of being divided, and injuries which are not. If two defendants, struggling for a single gun, succeed in shooting the plaintiff, there is no logical or reasonable basis for dividing the injury between them, and each will be liable for all of it. If they shoot him independently, with separate guns, and he dies from the effect of both wounds, there can still be no division, for death cannot be divided or apportioned except by an arbitrary rule devised for that purpose. If they merely inflict separate wounds, and he survives, a basis for division exists, because it is possible to regard the two wounds as separate injuries; and the same is of course true as to wounds negligently inflicted. There will be obvious difficulties of proof as to the apportionment of certain elements of damages, such as physical and mental suffering and medical expenses, but such difficulties are not insuperable, and it is better to attempt some rough division than to hold one defendant for the wound inflicted by the other.

W. Prosser, Law of Torts § 52, 313-14.

The traditional Iowa view is also consistent with the position adopted by the American Law Institute. Section 875 of the Restatement of Torts (Second) (1977) provides:

Each of two or more persons whose tortious conduct is a legal cause of a single and indivisible harm to the injured party is subject to liability to the injured party for the entire harm.

Comment b to that section explains:

This section is concerned only with harm that is not divisible. If the tortious conduct of two or more persons has contributed to the harm in such a manner that each is a legal cause of it, the liability is not apportioned and each is liable for the entire harm.

II. The Effect of Comparative Negligence.

A. The Farises argue that this traditional basis for joint and several liability is undermined by this court's adoption of comparative negligence in Goetzman v. Wichern, 327 N.W.2d 742 (Iowa 1982). They reason that the doctrine of joint and several liability only made sense when courts had no method for apportioning damages among co-tortfeasors. Now, they argue, comparative negligence under Goetzman provides a method for the division of damages between a plaintiff and defendants based on the percentage each party's negligence bears to the total negligence that proximately caused the damages. They therefore urge us to use the same rationale whether or not a plaintiff is negligent and apportion damages among defendants as well. The Farises also assert that fairness demands that they be held liable for no more than the percentage of...