Application of the Non-Party Fabre Defendant

In an earlier posting, I wrote about the defense concept known as the non-party Fabre defendant. This is an affirmative defense raised by a defendant in negligence scenarios to get a non-party on a jury verdict form so that the jury assigns a percentage of fault / liability for the plaintiff’s damages to this non-party. By assigning a percentage of fault to the non-party, the defendant’s liability for the plaintiff’s damages is reduced. By way of example, if the plaintiff has $100,000 in damages and sues the defendant for these damages, the defendant may claim that "X" should be responsible...