§ 25-21,185.10.Civil actions to which contributory negligence is a defense; multiple defendants; joint and several liability; when; allocation of liability.

Section 25-21,185.10 answers a question that arises whenever more than one defendant shares responsibility for a claimant’s harm: how much does each defendant owe? The answer depends on how the defendants caused the harm. When two or more defendants act in concert, as part of a common enterprise or plan, and cause the harm together, each of those defendants is jointly and severally liable for both economic and noneconomic damages. In that setting, the claimant can recover the full amount from any one of them, regardless of that defendant’s individual share of fault.

Outside that concerted-action setting — the more common scenario of independent defendants whose separate negligence combines to cause a single harm — the section splits liability along the line drawn in section 25-21,185.08. Liability for economic damages remains joint and several, so the claimant can still recover the full economic loss from any one defendant. Liability for noneconomic damages, by contrast, is several only, not joint: each defendant is liable for noneconomic damages only in direct proportion to that defendant’s own percentage of negligence, and the court enters a separate judgment against that defendant for that specific amount.

The practical effect is that a claimant facing several independently negligent defendants can look to any of them for the full economic loss — medical bills, lost wages, and the like — but has to collect noneconomic damages, such as pain and suffering, from each defendant only in that defendant’s own proportional share, with no ability to shift an insolvent defendant’s noneconomic share onto a solvent codefendant.