Jack Tuttle slipped and fell down 22 steps at an office complex where his employer, Lincare, leased space. He and his wife, Megan Tuttle, sued a number of entities connected with the complex, but not his employer Lincare. The Tuttles settled with many of them: Ceramic Tile World, Inc. paid $35,000; Selberg Associates paid $500,000 ($430,000 allocated to Jack Tuttle); and in a “global settlement,” other defendants paid a total of $2.2 million ($1.9 million allocated to Jack Tuttle).
The Tuttles went to trial against the lone remaining defendant, Medical Center, on the issue of damages. The parties entered into a stipulation on liability that was read to the jury and provided in pertinent part: Medical Center “was negligent in its use and maintenance” of the office complex and “caused . . . Jack Tuttle’s fall;” “neither Jack Tuttle [n]or any other individual or entity bears any comparative fault for Mr. Tuttle’s fall;” and Medical Center was “only contesting the full extent of Mr. Tuttle’s claimed injuries and damages.”
When discussing the stipulation with the trial court, Medical Center’s counsel alerted the court and plaintiffs that Medical Center would likely be seeking “setoffs” or “credits” for the settlements once the jury put a number on damages. Counsel also repeatedly sought assurance the language of the stipulation would not be understood as foreclosing Medical Center from seeking such setoffs or credits. The trial court sympathized, telling the Tuttles’s counsel “I’m not going to allow you to have your so-called cake and eat it, too.” The Tuttles’s counsel then responded he was willing to “go along with it.”
The jury found Jack Tuttle sustained total damages of $2,476,378.86 and Megan Tuttle sustained $150,000 in damages for lack of consortium. Following the verdict, the trial court instructed the clerk to record it and asked counsel if there was “anything further at the moment,” to which all replied there was not. The court then entered judgment in accordance with the verdict.
Shortly thereafter, Medical Center filed a motion under section 663 to vacate the judgment and enter a new judgment reflecting setoffs and credits for the pretrial settlements and workers’ compensation benefits paid by the insurance carrier for Jack Tuttle’s employer. Medical Center had purchased the carrier’s workers’ compensation lien. The trial court ordered setoff and reduced the judgment by the portion of the settlements attributable to economic damages ($1,074,843.40) and by the workers’ compensation benefits minus attorney fees ($375,312.41). Tuttle appealed. The Court of Appeal sustained the judgment in the unpublished case of Tuttle v Ukiah Adventist Hospital.
CCP section 877 provides that a judgment in favor of a tort plaintiff shall be offset by the amount of pretrial settlements the plaintiff obtains from other defendants allegedly liable for the tort.The purpose of the statute is to assure equitable sharing of damages and to assure a plaintiff will not be enriched unjustly by a double recovery, collecting part of his total claim from one joint tortfeasor and all of his claim from another.
“The obvious purpose of the parties’ stipulation concerning liability was to frame the issue to be tried for the jury (i.e., damages only), to prevent the jury from engaging in any speculation about the liability of other parties, and to foreclose the jury from making any apportionment of damages based on such speculation. The stipulation, in short, had nothing to do with setoff and did not constitute a knowing relinquishment by Medical Center of its right to setoff under section 877.”