§ 8.01-35.1.Effect of release or covenant not to sue in respect to liability and contribution.

When a plaintiff settles with one of several people liable for the same injury or wrongful death, subsection A explains what happens to everyone else. The settlement does not release the other wrongdoers unless its own terms say so. But whatever the plaintiff later recovers from the remaining defendants is reduced by the greater of the amount stated in the release or the actual consideration paid for it, and when a settlement involves future payments, the court looks at their present value in figuring that credit. The release itself is never shown to the jury; the trial judge factors it in only when entering judgment.

In exchange for that credit against the remaining defendants, the settling person is discharged from any obligation to contribute toward what those other defendants owe. Subsection B is the flip side of that bargain: the settling person gives up any right to seek contribution from the tortfeasors whose liability the settlement did not extinguish, and cannot recover contribution for any amount paid beyond what was reasonable.

Subsection C extends this framework to “high-low” agreements, where a plaintiff agrees to accept no more than one sum regardless of the verdict and the defense agrees to pay no less than another sum, whatever the jury decides. Parties who strike that kind of deal must give prompt notice of its terms to everyone else in the case.

Subsection D ties this section to the wrongful death and satisfaction-of-judgment statutes in §§ 8.01-55 and 8.01-424. Subsection E staggers the effective dates — written covenants not to sue executed on or after July 1, 1979, written releases on or after July 1, 1980, and oral covenants and releases agreed to on or after July 1, 1989 for causes of action accruing on or after that date — while allowing parties in a pending case to skip a writing altogether if they state the agreement in open court and promise to memorialize it later.