Recent Development by Michael B. North
Dennis Cavalier, an employee of WHC Contractors (WHC), was injured while testing a pipe at a job site owned by Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Corporation (Transcontinental). Cavalier filed a tort action, joining Transcontinental and Cain's Hydrostatic Testing (Cain's), a subcontractor of WHC. Cavalier settled with Transcontinental and proceeded to trial against Cain's. The jury found Cain's negligent and awarded damages of $500,000, but in so doing, assessed eighty-percent fault against the plaintiff's statutorily immune employer and twenty-percent fault against Cain's. The trial court then awarded only twenty percent of the total damages to Cavalier.
The court of appeal, relying on a recent Louisiana Supreme Court decision, amended the amount of the award, holding Cain's liable for one hundred percent of the total damages. The Louisiana Supreme Court unanimously affirmed, holding that in cases involving the negligence of a statutorily immune employer and a single, third-party tortfeasor, quantification of the employer's fault is unnecessary and inappropriate, and the third-party tortfeasor, as the sole remaining party at fault, is one hundred percent liable for all damages and cannot avail itself of Article 2324(B)'s fifty-percent limitation on solidary liability. Cavalier v. Cain's Hydrostatic Testing, Inc., 657 So. 2d 975 (La. 1995).
About the Author
Michael B. North.
Citation
70 Tul. L. Rev. 1165 (1996)