Personal Injury Lawyer Blog
(Please note: the names and locations of all parties have been changed to protect the confidentiality of the proceedings.)
Consequently, Plaintiff submit Judicial Council jury instructions Numbers 340 and 341 on the issue of causation. The above instructions are in accord with BAJI: There may be more than one cause of an injury. When [[negligent] [or] [wrongful] conduct of two or more persons] [or [[negligent] [or] [wrongful] conduct and a defective product]] contribute[s] concurrently as [a] cause[s] of an injury, [the conduct of] each is a cause of the injury regardless of the extent to which such contributes to the injury. A cause is concurrent if it was operative at the moment of injury and acted with another cause to produce the injury. [It is no defense that the [negligent] [wrongful] conduct of a person not joined as a party was also a cause of the injury.] (BAJI No. 3.77.)
And the Second District Court of Appeal has the following language on the use of BAJI No. 3.77: One purpose of BAJI 3.77 is to explain to the jury that plaintiff need not prove that the defendant’s negligence was the sole cause of plaintiff’s injury in order to recover. Rather, it is sufficient that defendant’s negligence is a legal cause of an injury, even though it operated in combination with other causes, whether tortious or non-tortious. (Logacz v. Limansky (2d Dist. 1999) 71 Cal.App.4th 1149, 1158.)
CONCLUSION
Consequently, by all relevant California authorities Plaintiffs do not have to apportion causation among the various defendants. The above jury instructions are accurate and the Court should not instruct the jury that apportionment of causation is required.
For more information you are welcome to contact Sacramento personal injury lawyer, Moseley Collins.