Tort - The Florida Bar Journal

See - The Florida Bar Journal





"x x x.

Under Florida’s comparative fault law, a negligent tortfeasor’s degree of liability is generally limited to his or her own degree of fault. The Florida Supreme Court has explained that comparative fault is intended to avoid unfairly burdening defendants in negligence cases with liability that they did not cause. A crucial element of this liability regime in negligence cases is a defendant tortfeasor’s ability to plead and prove that a codefendant or nonparty caused and, therefore, should be apportioned some or all of the fault for a plaintiff’s injuries, reducing the defendant tortfeasor’s liability accordingly. In the context of relatively simple cases, such as those arising from many typical automobile accidents, this is a straightforward inquiry into each party’s (and possibly nonparty’s) role in causing the plaintiff’s damages. However, in more complex commercial cases, the analysis of comparative fault can get bogged down by the complicated relationships between the parties, the likelihood that at least some of the parties are in contractual privity, and the often difficult process of discerning duties owed by parties to one another across a web of relationships. Florida courts’ repeated assertions in dicta that a party or nonparty must be “negligent” in order to be apportioned fault have only further muddied this analysis...

Full Article>

x x x."