When a Georgia injury traces to more than one wrongdoer, O.C.G.A. 51-12-33 splits the responsibility by percentage and generally makes each defendant answer only for its own share. The older model of one solvent defendant paying the whole judgment has largely given way to this divided approach.
Each wrongdoer draws a percentage. The statute has the factfinder assign a share of fault to every responsible party, tying each defendant’s exposure to its own portion. Where a contractor left a walkway hazard and a property manager ignored it, each may draw a separate share.
Several liability is the general rule. Because a defendant is generally answerable for its own share rather than the entire award, a plaintiff cannot ordinarily collect one defendant’s portion from another. That marks a sharp departure from older joint-liability principles.
Even absent parties can be assigned fault. The statute permits fault to be placed on persons not named in the suit, which can shrink the shares the named defendants carry. Whether an unnamed actor contributed enters the allocation.
Dividing liability among multiple defendants turns on a percentage for each wrongdoer, the general rule of several rather than joint liability, and the possible assignment of fault to absent parties. The practical weight of this regime falls on the injured person: where one share proves uncollectible, that loss is generally theirs to bear rather than the remaining defendants’, which is why how the percentages are set can matter as much as the total.