New Jersey Supreme Court Holding Impacts Allocation Of Damages In Cases Involving Successive Tortfeasors

• Published date: 24 March 2022
• Subject Matter: Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration, Trials & Appeals & Compensation, Personal Injury
• Law Firm: Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP
• Author: Mr Thomas Regan and Karley Kamaris

Newark, N.J. (March 21, 2022) - Late in 2021, the Supreme Court of New Jersey addressed the issue of allocating damages in personal injury cases in which the plaintiff asserts claims against successive tortfeasors, such as medical malpractice in the treatment of a slip and fall injury caused by negligence. The decision in Glassman v. Friedel, 249 N.J. 199 (2021) overruled and replaced the long-held principles established in Ciluffo v. Middlesex General Hospital, 146 N.J. Super. 478 (App. Div. 1977) regarding successive liability. Ciluffo held that, when an initial tortfeasor settles before trial, the non-settling defendants in a successive tort were entitled to a pro tanto credit for the settlement amount against any damages assessed against them. The Superior Court of New Jersey Appellate Division in 2020, and the Supreme Court of New Jersey last year, abandoned that framework for one more consistent with statutory contribution law in the Garden State.

In Glassman v. Friedel, 465 N.J. Super. 436 (App. Div. 2020), the Appellate Division held that the application of the principles in Ciluffo in a negligence case has no support in modern jurisprudence, thus limiting its application. It rejected the holding in Ciluffo in light of the state legislature's enactment of the Comparative Negligence Act, which requires juries to apportion damages between successive events and apportion fault among the parties responsible for each event. The appellate division went on to hold that a non-settling, successive tortfeasor may present proofs at trial as to the negligence of the settling tortfeasor, and that the burden of proof as to the initial tortfeasor's negligence being the proximate cause of the second causative event indeed lies on the non-settling defendant. In sum, the appellate division in Glassman established steps the jury can use to determine successive tortfeasor liability, but largely treated it as one, attenuated incident.

This decision was appealed to the Supreme Court of New Jersey, where the legitimacy of the Ciluffo standard was examined yet again. The court agreed with the appellate division that the Ciluffo credit does not further the legislative intent of the Comparative Negligence Act, but then modified the suggested approach to be more in line with such cases' treatment in the Third Restatement of Torts, '26, the Comparative Negligence Act, and the evolution of the jurisprudence surrounding the Act since its promulgation in 1972.

Thus, in cases...