''Summers v. Tice''
(1948), is a seminal
California Supreme Court tort
A tort is a civil wrong, other than breach of contract, that causes a claimant to suffer loss or harm, resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act. Tort law can be contrasted with criminal law, which deals with cri ...
law
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...
decision relating to the issue of liability where a
plaintiff
A plaintiff ( Π in legal shorthand) is the party who initiates a lawsuit (also known as an ''action'') before a court. By doing so, the plaintiff seeks a legal remedy. If this search is successful, the court will issue judgment in favor of the ...
cannot identify with specificity which among multiple
defendant
In court proceedings, a defendant is a person or object who is the party either accused of committing a crime in criminal prosecution or against whom some type of civil relief is being sought in a civil case.
Terminology varies from one juris ...
s caused his harm. The case established the doctrine of
alternative liability and has had its greatest influence in the area of
product liability in
American jurisprudence.
Background
In ''Summers'' the plaintiff, Charles A. Summers, accompanied defendants Tice and Simonson as a guide on a
quail hunt on November 20, 1945. Each of the defendants was armed with a
12 gauge shotgun loaded with
shells containing 7 size shot. Prior to going
hunting
Hunting is the Human activity, human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, and killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to obtain the animal's body for meat and useful animal products (fur/hide (sk ...
plaintiff discussed the hunting procedure with defendants, indicating that they were to exercise care when shooting and to "keep in line." Plaintiff advanced ahead of the defendants up a
hill
A hill is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain. It often has a distinct summit, and is usually applied to peaks which are above elevation compared to the relative landmass, though not as prominent as Mountain, mountains. Hills ...
, creating a
triangle
A triangle is a polygon with three corners and three sides, one of the basic shapes in geometry. The corners, also called ''vertices'', are zero-dimensional points while the sides connecting them, also called ''edges'', are one-dimension ...
among the three men, with plaintiff front and center. The view of both defendants with respect to Summers was unobstructed, and both defendants knew his location, 75 yards from each of them. A quail flew to a 10-foot elevation above the plaintiff's head (approximately four feet higher than the plaintiff's head), both defendants shot at the quail, and
bird shot struck plaintiff in his right
eye and another in his upper
lip
The lips are a horizontal pair of soft appendages attached to the jaws and are the most visible part of the mouth of many animals, including humans. Mammal lips are soft, movable and serve to facilitate the ingestion of food (e.g. sucklin ...
.
Plaintiff sued both defendants for personal injuries. At trial it was established that each of two pellets had caused the injuries to plaintiff's lip and eye, respectively, and both might have been discharged from a single weapon (defendant) or each defendant may have contributed one of the injuring pellets. The trial court found that the defendants were
negligent (i.e., that when they discharged their weapons they did not do so with ordinary prudence), and that the plaintiff was not contributorily negligent. The defendants appealed.
[''Summers v. Tice'', 33 Cal. 2d 80, 82-83, 199 P.2d 1, 2 (1948)]
California Supreme Court ruling
On appeal the defendants argued that they were not joint tortfeasors because they were not acting in concert. On the subject of negligence, defendant Simonson contended that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the finding on that score. The court ruled that Simonson did not however point out wherein the plaintiff's evidence was lacking. Defendant Tice on the other hand stated in his opening brief that "we have decided not to argue the insufficiency of negligence on the part of defendant Tice." The court noted that Tice neither conceded the point nor argued it in his petition for a hearing before the court and the court therefore did not address that issue further. Accordingly, in their view, neither was liable, and they could not be held jointly and severally liable (i.e., each defendant was liable for the full amount of damages).
[
''Summers v. Tice'', 33 Cal. 2d, 199 P.2d (1948)]
The court affirmed the lower court ruling that each defendant's behavior fell below the standard of care (i.e., they were both negligent) and that the plaintiff's conduct did not contribute to his injury. Laying out the groundbreaking doctrine of
alternative liability, because both defendants had been negligent, the court then decided that justice required that the burden of proving which of the defendants had caused either or both of plaintiff's injuries be shifted to the defendants, so that either could absolve himself of liability if possible. This is because it would have been impossible for the plaintiff to show which of the two negligent actors had caused his harm.
''Summers v. Tice'' has had enormous precedential impact within the
state
State most commonly refers to:
* State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory
**Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country
**Nation state, a ...
of California and persuasive authority in other jurisdictions in the area of product liability.
See also
* ''
Missouri v. Holland''
References
Further reading
*
Suing the Tobacco and Lead Pigment Industries: Government Litigation as Public Health Prescription' by Donald G. Gifford. Ann Arbor,
University of Michigan Press
The University of Michigan Press is a university press that is a part of Michigan Publishing at the University of Michigan Library. It publishes 170 new titles each year in the humanities and social sciences. Titles from the press have earn ...
, 2010.
External links
Link to full text of caseIn PDF format
{{DEFAULTSORT:Summers V. Tice
Supreme Court of California case law
United States tort case law
1948 in United States case law
1947 in California
1947 in United States case law
Hunting in the United States
Fowling