220
Opinion of the Court
the amounts a trier of fact would have set. It seems to us that a plaintiff's good fortune in striking a favorable bargain with one defendant gives other defendants no claim to pay less than their proportionate share of the total loss. In fact, one of the virtues of the proportionate share rule is that, unlike the pro tanto rule, it does not make a litigating defendant's liability dependent on the amount of a settlement negotiated by others without regard to its interests.
Respondents also argue that the proportionate share rule is inconsistent with Edmonds v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 443 U. S. 256 (1979). In that case, we refused to reduce the judgment against a shipowner by the proportionate fault attributed to a stevedore whose liability was limited by the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act. Instead, the Court allowed the plaintiff to collect from the shipowner the entirety of his damages, after adjusting for the plaintiff's own negligence. There is no inconsistency between that result and the rule announced in this opinion. Edmonds was primarily a statutory construction case and related to special interpretive questions posed by the 1972 amendments to the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act. Both parties acknowledge that this case must be resolved by judge-made rules of law. Moreover, Edmonds did not address the issue in this case, the effect of a settlement on nonsettling defendants. Indeed, there was no settlement in that case. Instead, one can read that opinion as merely reaffirming the well-established principle of joint and several liability. As the Court pointed out, that principle was in no way abrogated by Reliable Transfer's proportionate fault approach. Edmonds, 443 U. S., at 271- 272, n. 30. In addition, as the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws have noted, there is no tension between joint and several liability and a proportionate share approach to settlements.31 Joint and several liability applies when there
31 Uniform Comparative Fault Act § 2, Comment "Joint and Several Liability and Equitable Shares of the Obligation," 12 U. L. A. 51 (1993 Supp.).
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