New York should abolish joint and several liability and start applying a system of pro rata share of fault for negligence cases like in Florida.

Joint and several liabilities are inequitable because a defendant can potentially be held responsible for more than their portion of the fault. For this very reason, it leads to additional lawsuits for contributions from other defendants who were also at fault or for third-party defendants to be brought in pending lawsuits, which can cause many delays.

While in Florida, each defendant is only liable for their percentage of fault without the need for defendants to sue each other for contribution or to bring third-party defendants in a pending lawsuit. Under what is known as the Fabre doctrine, the percentage of fault of a non-party will be included in the appointment of liability between all parties involved and included in the verdict sheet. The Fabre defendant will not be included in the final judgment because of due process considerations, so they will not actually have to pay anything, but the amount of the verdict will be reduced by the percentage of the fault that the jury apportioned to them.

This scenario is particularly accommodating when a passenger of a vehicle involved in a car accident wants to sue the driver of another vehicle for negligence without bringing in the driver of the vehicle that they were a passenger in at the time of the car accident. This is usually because the driver of the vehicle that they were a passenger in at the time of the car accident is a family member or friend. In NY, if the driver of the vehicle that the plaintiff was a passenger in at the time of the car accident was even slightly at fault for causing the crash, the defendant will usually bring them in the lawsuit as a third-party defendant. With the Fabre doctrine, there is no need to bring them in. Their portion of liability will be taken into consideration without their presence.  I remember countless times when clients of mine would tell me that they did not want to sue their family members or friends even if they were covered by insurance and were reluctant to file a lawsuit to keep them out of it. The Fabre doctrine eliminates those concerns completely.