Legal & Jurisdiction
Joint and Several Liability
Joint and several liability lets a claimant recover the full amount of a loss from any one of several at-fault parties, leaving those parties to sort out their shares.
When more than one party caused a loss, joint and several liability can allow recovery of the whole amount from a single defendant, typically the one with the deepest coverage. Many states have modified the doctrine, so how much can be collected from whom depends on the jurisdiction's rules and the parties' shares of fault.