Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

201 Okla. 346

Sykes v. Wright

Supreme Court of Oklahoma

Decided May 3, 1949

Supreme Court of Oklahoma · decided 1949-05-03

(Syllabus.) 1. ACTION — <italic>Liability of joint tort-feasors —</italic> <italic>Splitting of cause of action not permitted in expectation</italic> <italic>of having separate recoveries for single wrong.</italic> A joint tort gives rise to but a single cause of action, and a plaintiff may proceed jointly or severally against each or all of the wrongdoers until satisfaction of the cause of action has been received, but may not split the cause of action with the expectation of having separate recoveries and separate satisfactions for the single wrong. 2. DEATH — <italic>Judgment in wrongful death action under</italic> <italic>Federal Employers' Liability Act full determination of</italic> <italic>cause of action.</italic> A judgment entered in a wrongful death action under the Federal Employers' Liability Act for an amount agreed upon by the parties, in which case liability was determined by the court upon issues joined, constitutes a full determination of the cause of action, and upon satisfaction of the judgment so entered the cause of action is extinguished, though the court in the journal entry of judgment undertakes to reserve to plaintiff the right to sue other joint tort-feasors as agreed upon by the parties in their contract of settlement; that portion of the judgment reserving the action as to other joint tort-feasors is in excess of the court's authority and ineffectual.

Relies on Cain v. Quannah Light & Ice Co. · Bland v. Lawyer-Cuff Co. · Colby v. Walker

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1949-05-03

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently July 1996

7 state decisions

40194919501960197019801990decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

HALLEY, J.

¶1(dissenting). Long ago we adopted the rule that a plaintiff could release one joint tort-feasor without releasing the others, either before or after judgment (Bland v. Lawyer-Cuff Co., 72 Okla. 128, 178 P. 885; City of Tulsa v. McIntosh et al., 90 Okla. 50, 215 P. 624), and no harm can be done now by going one step further and permitting a plaintiff to settle as to one joint tort-feasor and have the settlement put in judgment without prejudice to the right to pursue the other joint tort-feasors in a separate action.

¶2Every safeguard was thrown about the settlement in the action against the railroad to protect the right to proceed against the other tort-feasors; and to say that because there can be but one satisfaction of a judgment, when the record showed that it was never intended that the judgment taken was a full and complete satisfaction of the death claim as to all tort-feasors, might be logical, but it is not common sense. Here the railroad desired its settlement to go to judgment, but had no intention to satisfy the plaintiff’s claim in full as to the other tort-feasors in the accident. The defendants in this case reap where they have not sown, and are being relieved from possible liability when it was not intended. If we hold that the rule laid down in Cain v. Quannah Light & Ice Co., 131 Okla. 25, 267 P. 641, cuts off the right to maintain a second action, regardless of the plain intention of the parties in the first action to preserve the right to sue other persons who may be liable for the tort, I think that case should be overruled insofar as it prohibits such action. Colby v. Walker, 86 N. H. 568, 171 A. 774, 104 A.L.R. 840.

¶3I respectfully dissent.

/201/okla/346 · .json · Public domain