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532 So. 2d 750

Snyder v. Taylor

Supreme Court of Louisiana

Decided October 3, 1988

Supreme Court of Louisiana · decided 1988-10-03

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““The holding of Franklin is totally illogical. It allows an employer (or coem-ployee) to be totally relieved of liability in tort (even if the employer is 99% at fault), thereby placing all responsibility for damages on the joint tortfeasor (who may be only 1% at fault), and further allows the employer to recover all compensation payments. Thus, the employer, no matter how great his fault, totally escapes both tort and compensation responsibility. It would be vastly more just to apportion the fault between the tortfeasors and to allow the plaintiff to recover against the non-employer tort-feasor the appropriate proportion of his tort damages and to recover against the employer the appropriate proportion of the employer’s compensation liability, or to fashion some similar relief based on logic and fairness.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Melton v. General Electric Co.

Relies on 478 So. 2d 549 - Franklin v. Oilfield Heavy Haulers · State v. Borning

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1988-10-03

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently June 2008

4 state decisions

20198819902000decided

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 →

LEMMON, Justice,

¶1concurring in the denial of the application.

¶2, I believe (1) DOTD is at fault for having created a trap that misled unwary motorists in Dachille’s position, (2) Taylor is at fault for crossing the double yellow line in the face of oncoming traffic, and (3) Dac-hille is not at fault because he continued in his lane delineated by the double yellow lines, believing the yield sign off to his right was for traffic northbound onto the parish road or westbound on La. Hwy. 2.

¶3I specifically disagree, however, with the holding of Franklin v. Oilfield Heavy Haulers, 478 So.2d 549 (La.App. 3rd Cir. 1985), cert. denied, 481 So.2d 1330, 1331 (La.1985). If Dachille were in fact at fault in this case, his fault should be proportioned along with that of DOTD and Taylor.

¶4The holding of Franklinis totally illogical. It allows an employer (or coemployee) to be totally relieved of liability in tort (even if the employer is 99% at fault), thereby placing all responsibility for damages on the joint tortfeasor (who may be only 1% at fault), and further allows the employer to recover all compensation payments. Thus, the employer, no matter how great his fault, totally escapes both tort and compensation responsibility. It would be vastly more just to apportion the fault between the tortfeasors and to allow the plaintiff to recover against the non-employer tortfeasor the appropriate proportion of his tort damages and to recover against the employer the appropriate proportion of the employer’s compensation liability, or to fashion some similar relief based on logic and fairness.

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