Alternative liability
legal doctrine
Alternative liability is a legal doctrine that allows a plaintiff to shift the burden of proving causation of their injury to multiple defendants, even though only one of them could have been responsible. The leading case showing the principle of alternative liability in action is Summers v. Tice, where the two defendants negligently shot in the direction of the plaintiff and two pellets caused the plaintiff's injury, one in the right eye and one in the upper lip. In the interests of justice, the innocent plaintiff's case is not defeated because they cannot prove which party was the actual cause (but-for cause) of their injury.
Requirements
The doctrine requires that the plaintiff bring all possible defendants into court and that the plaintiff show the defendants all breached a duty of reasonable care. The burden then shifts to the defendants to provide evidence of who caused the injury.
Rationale
The underpinning of this doctrine is that a plaintiff should not be barred from seeking recovery simply because they does not know who caused their injury. The defendants are usually the parties in the best position to have the relevant information.
Distinguish alternative liability from the smoke-out function of res ipsa loquitur seen in the leading case of Ybarra v. Spangard.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alternative liability” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.