law case study

Joint and several liabilities suggest that a person(s) who contributed to or concurrently injured another party can be held equally liable for the award by the court. Some feel that each person named should be individually limited to payment only of the amount of the fault by them; others disagree. I would stand for the first scenario where the person(s) who contributed to or concurrently injured another party can be held equally responsible/liable for the award by the court.

In our case study, a case where an accident happened rendering middle aged man left paralyzed after engaging in a fatal accident. The case is taken to court where the court rule in favor of the plaintiff obtaining $7.5 million settlement though the primarily liable defendant only could raise $1.5 million in liability coverage. The primarily liable defendant was a small New Hampshire corporation who the driver has made an illegal U-turn causing the accident. The large New Hampshire Corporation which in this case was less than fifty percent at fault was still held responsible. The small New Hampshire Corporation could only raise $1.5 million and the large New Hampshire Corporation was held to raise $6.0 million in order to complete settlement of $7.5million required.

It should be considered this way while ruling over a case in the court; the party which is fifty percent fault also to be held responsible where necessary. In the scenario where the primarily liable party has no enough funds to settle the fine passed by the court. In the case study the $7.5 million had been set in order to be enough to build a house for the paralyzed plaintiff and resettle him. However the subcontractor which was primarily liable could only raise $1.5 million which was very little to settle the plaintiff or the victim. This made it easy for the court to get a solution to the problem. The large contractor which was the employer of the subcontractor meaning it was in better position to raise the remaining bill. Therefore the fine was finally settled as it was to be.

The other reason why I stand with this side is that, the primarily liable party can be inferior to the other related parties to the case at hand and maybe the superior party is the one which has led the inferior party commit such crime. In the case study the subcontractor which is primarily liable is inferior over the general contractor since the subcontractor is employee of the general contractor. The fact was that, the general contractor’s manager had made this illegal turn more than once making the subcontractor’s manager who in turn made the driver think the turn is illegal. In general the mistake came from above. This ruling at last became a fair one since the root cause of the crime was heavily held responsible being the large New Hampshire Corporation.