The answer is Yes when several parties negligently caused injury to another person, this is the case where joint and several liability finds application, in other terms the negligent parties can be held jointly and severally liable in a civil case or precisely in a personal injury lawsuit filed by the injured person.
This means that the injured party can go after any one of the negligent parties for the entire judgment amount even if that party was not 100 percent responsible for the injury , if this happens then one of the negligent parties can seek reimbursement from other negligent parties for the portion of the damages that he or she is responsible for .
However, it’s important to know that under CALIFORNIA LAW “joint and several liability” applies only to “economic damages” like ; attorneys fees and medical costs, as for the “non-economic damages” multiple parties are only separately responsible for the said damages in proportion to their percentage of fault.
As an example, Luke was injured in a car accident which was caused by two separate drivers Hailey and Alex, acting negligently. At trial, the jury found that Luke’s injuries should be compensated with $140,000 in economic damages. Luke can get the entire $140,000 from either Alex or Hailey, regardless of their percentage of fault. It is up to the two of them to fight over paying the fair share through a later contribution action (a separate legal action between the parties who caused the injury, precisely when the party that had been held responsible for the entire amount of economic damages sue the remaining parties for their percentage of fault).
For the non-economic damages , when the case goes to trial, it will be the “trier of fact” (the jury if it is “jury trial”, or the judge if it is a “bench trial”) who will determine the percentage of fault each party had when causing the injury.
By way of example, in Luke’s case as described above, the jury found that Hailey was 35% responsible for causing the accident and that Alex was 65% responsible for causing the accident. If John collects all of his economic damages from Hailey , Hailey then can file a contribution action against Alex to require her to pay 65% of the total damages.
