Last Lines of Defence: Protecting Settling Defendants From Future Actions for Indivisible Injuries

Published April 2009

In the January issue of the Advocate, Mr. Justice Goepel and I discussed apportionment of damages between multiple tortfeasors. The purpose of the article was two-fold: development of a taxonomy for categorizing discrete apportionment situations; and an attempt to resolve an apparent conflict between the decision of our Court of Appeal in Long v. Thiessen and the decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada in Athey v. Leonati and G. (E.D.) v. Hammer. It did not, however, delve into the many practical aspects of this subject. This paper addresses one such aspect: the effect of apportionment principles on settlements and releases.

Download Paper
(PDF Format, 10 pgs)