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More states have also adopted looser standards of comparative negligence. Even if an accident was partly due to the plaintiffs own negligence, he can successfully sue someone else who also bears some of the blame. In California, for example, a woman who stumbled in a church parking lot on the way to a meeting sued the church, the group holding the meeting and the city, contending that the lot was not lit well enough. Although the defendants felt she was largely responsible, all three agreed to a settlement paying her $80,000.
Perhaps the thorniest concept, one that has become a growing factor in many cases, is called "joint and several liability." It allows a plaintiff to sue everyone who might share in the responsibility for an accident, and if any one of the defendants is found to be partially at fault, that defendant may be forced to pay the entire judgment. Originally, it was applied to wrongdoers who had acted in concert, but now is more often invoked against defendants who acted independently. In practice, it increasingly means that awards fall most heavily on the defendant with "deep pockets," often the one carrying the most insurance. The doctrine is now in force in nearly all states.
One way to show how these concepts work--and the effects they can have on insurance coverage--is through a classic case settled last year that began with a child's fall and ended with most of Chicago's parks being stripped of certain kinds of playground equipment. It began in 1978 when two-year-old Frank Nelson fell through a wide space at the top of a slide in a city playground and struck his head on the pavement 11 ft. below. He suffered severe brain damage; the left side of his body is still paralyzed, and his speech and vision are impaired. Nelson's family sued the manufacturer of the slide, the contractor who installed it and the Chicago Park District. Lawyers contended that the district had been negligent in failing to warn against use of the slide by small children, in not providing proper supervision of the playground and not putting a softer surface under the slide.
Officials of the park district and its insurer, U.S. Fidelity and Guaranty Co. of Baltimore, still contend that the primary responsibility for the accident fell on Frank's mother; she allowed the boy to go on a slide he was too young to use, and should have been watching him more closely. But they never formally accused the mother of negligence in pretrial proceedings; such an argument would not have succeeded unless they also could have convinced a jury that the park district bore no blame whatever. In this case the park district was the defendant with the deep pockets--$50 million in liability insurance--and Fidelity was afraid that it would be hit with the largest share of any judgment. Paul Jacob, the insurer's Chicago branch manager, notes that in Illinois a defendant who is found to bear any part of the responsibility for an accident can be liable for all of a damage award. Says he: "Showing that any defendant is not 1% negligent is virtually impossible."
Unwilling to risk paying the damages a jury might award to a child who had been so severely injured, Fidelity offered a settlement. It proposed to put up $1.5 million to buy an annuity that will make payments each year to Frank Nelson for the rest of his life. The family accepted, and the case was closed without trial.