“fact that plaintiff discontinued his claim against [defendant] without monetary consideration does not, under the circumstances at bar, take the matter out of the purview of section 15-108 of the General Obligations Law.”
How later courts described this case
- “fact that plaintiff discontinued his claim against [defendant] without monetary consideration does not, under the circumstances at bar, take the matter out of the purview of section 15-108 of the General Obligations Law.”
- referring to “equitable share of the damages as found by the jury”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Suozzi, J. P.,
concurs in the result, with the following memorandum: I am in full accord with the majority’s holding that the judgment entered in favor of plaintiff and against defendant hospital in the principal sum of $275,000 must be reversed and a new trial granted. However, I disagree with so much of the dicta which states that the trial • court correctly calculated the amount by which the verdict against the hospital, i.e., $650,000, had to be reduced due to plaintiff’s settlement of the case against the remaining defendants, Doctors Reinhardt, Nichlas and Muojo. Since Doctors Reinhardt and Nichlas paid $265,000 in settlement, which exceeded their equitable share of the damages (i.e., 30% of the $650,000 or $195,000), *854 the trial court correctly ruled, pursuant to section 15-108 of the General Obligations Law, that the verdict had to be reduced by the greater of those figures, i.e., $265,000, leaving a verdict of $385,000. For the same reasoning, however, once plaintiff settled his case against defendant Muojo for no consideration—and the majority concedes that such a settlement does not take the matter out of the purview of section 15-108 of the General Obligations Law—the defendant hospital was entitled to a further reduction in the verdict by an amount representing Muojo’s equitable share of the damages, i.e., 20% of $650,000 or $130,000 and not $110,000 as held by the trial court and approved by the majority.