Walt Disney World Co. v. Wood

• Decision Date: 05 November 1987
• Docket Number: No. 68647,68647
• Parties: , 12 Fla. L. Weekly 555 WALT DISNEY WORLD CO., et al., Petitioners, v. Aloysia WOOD, et al., Respondents.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

Page 198

515 So.2d 198

56 USLW 2333, 12 Fla. L. Weekly 555

WALT DISNEY WORLD CO., et al., Petitioners, v. Aloysia WOOD, et al., Respondents.

No. 68647.

Supreme Court of Florida.

Nov. 5, 1987.

John L. O'Donnell, Jr., Thomas B. DeWolf and John H. Ward of DeWolf, Ward

& Morris, P.A., Orlando, and Chris W. Altenbernd of Fowler, White, Gillen, Boggs, Villereal and Banker, Tampa, for petitioners.

Sheldon J. Schlesinger, P.A., Fort Lauderdale, and Joel D. Eaton of Podhurst, Orseck, Parks, Josefsberg, Eaton, Meadow & Olin, P.A., Miami, for respondents.

Marjorie Gadarian Graham of Jones & Foster, P.A., West Palm Beach, amicus curiae for Florida Defense Lawyers' Ass'n.

DuBose Ausley, William M. Smith and Timothy B. Elliott of Ausley, McMullen, McGehee, Carothers & Proctor, Tallahassee, amicus curiae for The Florida R.R. Ass'n.

C. Rufus Pennington, III of Margol, Fryefield & Pennington, Jacksonville, amicus curiae for The Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers.

Joseph W. Little, Gainesville, amicus curiae.

GRIMES, Justice.

The Fourth District Court of Appeal has certified the following question as one of great public importance:

DOES THE HOLDING IN LINCENBERG v. ISSEN DICTATE AN AFFIRMANCE OF THE TRIAL COURT'S DECISION IN THIS CASE?

Walt Disney World Co. v. Wood, 489 So.2d 61, 63 (Fla. 4th DCA 1986). We have jurisdiction pursuant to article V, section 3(b)(4), Florida Constitution.

Aloysia Wood was injured in November 1971 at the grand prix attraction at Walt Disney World (Disney), when her fiance, ¹ Daniel Wood, rammed from the rear the vehicle which she was driving. Aloysia Wood filed suit against Disney, and Disney sought contribution from Daniel Wood. ² After trial, the jury returned a verdict finding Aloysia Wood 14% at fault, Daniel Wood 85% at fault, and Disney 1% at fault. The jury assessed Wood's damages at $75,000. The court entered judgment against Disney for 86% of the damages. Disney subsequently moved to alter the judgment to reflect the jury's finding that Disney was only 1% at fault. The court denied the motion. On appeal, the fourth district affirmed the judgment on the basis of this Court's decision in Lincenberg v. Issen, 318 So.2d 386 (Fla.1975).

In Hoffman v. Jones, 280 So.2d 431 (Fla.1973), this Court discarded the rule of contributory negligence, which Florida had followed since at least 1886, and adopted the pure comparative negligence standard. See Smith v. Department of Insurance, 507 So.2d 1080 (Fla.1987) (tracing the evolution of contributory and comparative negligence); Louisville & N.R.R. v. Yniestra, 21 Fla. 700 (1886) (establishing contributory negligence on the part of a prospective plaintiff as a bar to any recovery against a defendant). In adopting comparative negligence, this Court expressly declared two purposes for the change in judicial policy:

(1) To allow a jury to apportion fault as it sees fit between negligent parties whose negligence was part of the legal and proximate cause of any loss or injury; and

(2) To apportion the total damages resulting from the loss or injury according to the proportionate fault of each party.

Hoffman, 280 So.2d at 439.

Thereafter, in Lincenberg v. Issen, a faultless plaintiff obtained a verdict in which the jury determined that one defendant was 85% percent negligent and the other defendant was 15% negligent. The district court of appeal held that the jury should not have been asked to apportion fault between the defendants. Issen v. Lincenberg, 293 So.2d 777 (Fla. 3d DCA 1974). On review, this Court concluded that the rationale of Hoffman v. Jones dictated the elimination of the rule against contribution among joint tortfeasors. The Court then said that since " 'no contribution' is no longer a viable principle in Florida, we were confronted with the problem of determining what procedure will most fully effectuate the principle that each party should pay the proportion of the total damages he has caused to the other party, and we considered several alternatives." Lincenberg, 318 So.2d at 392 (footnote omitted). At this point, the Court stated in footnote 2 that among the alternatives considered was pure apportionment whereby the plaintiff may recover judgment against codefendants only for the percentage of damages caused by the negligence of each individual defendant. However, the Court noted that the legislature had just passed section 768.31, Florida Statutes (1975), which provided for contribution among joint tortfeasors and interpreted the statute as retaining the "full, joint, and several liability of joint tortfeasors to the plaintiff." Thus, the Court held:

The plaintiff is entitled to a measurement of his full damages and the liability for these damages should be apportioned in accordance with the percentage of negligence as it relates to the total of all the defendants. The negligence attributed to the defendants will then be apportioned on a pro rata basis without considering relative degrees of fault although the multiparty defendants will remain jointly and severally liable for the entire amount.

Lincenberg, 318 So.2d at 393-94.

While arising in the context of a faultless plaintiff, it cannot reasonably be said that the Court in Lincenberg did not pass on the question now before us. Understandably, courts addressing the issue in subsequent decisions, including this Court, have interpreted Lincenberg as upholding the doctrine of joint and several liability. Borden, Inc. v. Florida E. Coast Ry., 772 F.2d 750 (11th Cir.1985); Woods v. Withrow, 413 So.2d 1179 (Fla.1982); Department of Transportation v. Webb, 409 So.2d 1061 (Fla. 1st DCA 1981), review denied, 419 So.2d 1200 (Fla.1982); Metropolitan Dade County v. Asusta, 359 So.2d 58 (Fla. 3d DCA 1978); Moore v. St. Cloud Utilities, 337 So.2d 982 (Fla. 4th DCA), cert. denied, 337 So.2d 809 (Fla.1976). Therefore, the certified question, as worded, must be answered in the affirmative.

The real issue before us is whether we should now replace the doctrine of joint and several liability with one in which the liability of codefendants to the plaintiff is apportioned according to each defendant's respective fault. According to Disney, this Court in Hoffman set for itself the goal of creating a tort system that fairly and equitably allocated damages according to the degrees of fault. Therefore, a defendant should only be held responsible to the extent of his fault in the same way as a plaintiff under comparative negligence.

Joint and several liability is a judicially created doctrine. Louisville & N.R.R. v. Allen, 67 Fla. 257, 65 So. 8 (1914). This Court may alter a rule of law where great social upheaval dictates its necessity. Hoffman, 280 So.2d 435. The "social upheaval" which is said to have occurred here is the fundamental alteration of Florida tort law encompassed by the adoption of comparative negligence. ³ Following the adoption of comparative negligence, some states have passed laws eliminating joint and several liability, ⁴ and the courts of several others have judicially abolished the doctrine. E.g., Brown v. Keill, 224 Kan. 195, 580 P.2d 867 (1978); Bartlett v. New Mexico Welding Supply, Inc., 98 N.M. 152 646 P.2d 579 (Ct.App.), cert. denied, 98 N.M. 336, 648 P.2d 794 (1982); Laubach v. Morgan, 588 P.2d 1071 (Okla.1978). The Kansas Supreme Court in Brown v. Keill reasoned:

There is nothing inherently fair about a defendant who is 10% at fault paying 100% of the loss, and there is no social policy that should compel defendants to pay more than their fair share of the loss. Plaintiffs now take the parties as they find them. If one of the parties at fault happens to be a spouse or a governmental agency and if by reason of some competing social policy the plaintiff cannot receive payment for his injuries from the spouse or agency, there is no compelling social policy which requires the codefendant to pay more than his fair share of the loss. The same is true if one of the defendants is wealthy and the other is not.

Brown, 224 Kan. at 203, 580 P.2d at 874.

On the other hand, the majority of courts which have faced the issue in jurisdictions with comparative negligence have ruled that joint and several liability should be retained. E.g., Arctic Structures, Inc. v. Wedmore, 605 P.2d 426 (Alaska 1979); American Motorcycle Ass'n v. Superior Court, 20 Cal.3d 578, 578 P.2d 899, 146 Cal.Rptr. 182 (1978); Tucker v. Union Oil Co., 100 Idaho 590, 603 P.2d 156 (1979); Coney v. J.L.G. Industries, Inc., 97 Ill.2d 104, 73 Ill.Dec. 337, 454 N.E.2d 197 (1983); Kirby Bldg. Sys. v. Mineral Explorations, 704 P.2d 1266 (Wyo.1985). The Illinois Supreme Court in Coney v. J.L.G. Industries, Inc. gave four reasons justifying the retention of joint and several liability:

(1) The feasibility of apportioning fault on a comparative basis does not render an indivisible injury "divisible" for purposes of the joint and several liability rule. A concurrent tortfeasor is liable for the whole of an indivisible injury when his negligence is a proximate cause of that damage. In many instances, the negligence of a concurrent tortfeasor may be sufficient by itself to cause the entire loss. The mere fact that it may be possible to assign some percentage figure to the relative culpability of one negligent defendant as compared to another does not in any way suggest that each defendant's negligence is not a proximate cause of the entire indivisible injury.

(2) In those instances where the plaintiff is not guilty of negligence, he would be forced to bear a portion of the loss should one of the tortfeasors prove financially unable to satisfy his share of the damages.

(3) Even in cases where a plaintiff is partially at fault, his culpability is not equivalent to that of a defendant. The plaintiff's negligence relates only to a lack of due care for his own safety while the defendant's negligence relates to a lack of due care for the safety of others; the latter is tortious, but the former is not.

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