Definition
Two or more persons who are legally responsible for the same tort. Joint tortfeasors share liability for a single injury or wrong — either because they acted together in committing it, because their independent acts combined to produce an indivisible harm, or because one is vicariously liable for another's conduct.
The concept carries significant procedural and remedial consequences. A plaintiff may typically sue all joint tortfeasors together, sue any subset, or sue each one individually. Under traditional common law rules, each joint tortfeasor is liable for the full amount of the plaintiff's damages — not merely their proportionate share. This is the doctrine of joint and several liability.
Common Confusion
Joint tortfeasors is frequently confused with two related but distinct ideas:
JOINT TORTFEASORS vs. CONCURRENT TORTFEASORS: Joint tortfeasors, strictly defined, act in concert — they share a common plan, purpose, or participation in the wrongful act. Concurrent tortfeasors act independently but their separate negligent acts happen to combine and cause the same harm. Modern courts and statutes often treat both groups identically for liability purposes, and many sources use the terms interchangeably, but the distinction can matter when analyzing concert-of-action requirements or conspiracy-based claims.
JOINT TORTFEASORS vs. SUCCESSIVE TORTFEASORS: Where one tortfeasor causes an initial injury and a second causes a separate, additional injury, they are successive tortfeasors, not joint tortfeasors. Divisibility of harm is the key issue. Joint tortfeasors are associated with indivisible harm; successive tortfeasors with harm that can, at least theoretically, be apportioned.
Core Elements
To establish that defendants are joint tortfeasors, courts generally look to one or more of the following bases:
1. CONCERT OF ACTION: Defendants acted together pursuant to a common design or plan, each participating in or encouraging the wrongful conduct.
2. INDIVISIBLE HARM FROM INDEPENDENT ACTS: Defendants acted independently, but their conduct combined to produce a single, indivisible injury that cannot be meaningfully apportioned among them.
3. VICARIOUS OR IMPUTED LIABILITY: One party is legally responsible for the tortious act of another by operation of law — as with employer and employee, or principal and agent.
Why It Matters in Research
The doctrine of joint and several liability is one of the most legislatively modified areas of tort law in the last fifty years. A researcher who finds historical common law sources describing joint tortfeasors as each fully liable for the entire judgment is not looking at the rule in most U.S. jurisdictions today. Beginning in the 1980s, tort reform legislation swept through state legislatures, and the majority of states have now abolished, limited, or conditioned joint and several liability — replacing it with proportionate or several-only liability in whole or in part. Some states retain joint and several liability only for economic damages, or only when a defendant's share of fault exceeds a threshold percentage, or only in specific categories of cases (intentional torts, hazardous waste). The rule you find in Bouvier's reflects the pre-reform baseline, which is the starting point for historical analysis but not necessarily the operative rule in any given jurisdiction today.
The contribution question is closely linked and equally important. At common law, there was generally no right of contribution among joint tortfeasors — a defendant who paid the full judgment had no legal recourse against co-defendants. This rule was widely reformed by statute through Uniform Contribution Among Tortfeasors Acts and their variations. Researchers tracing indemnity and contribution claims must identify which version of the contribution regime a jurisdiction adopted and when.
For corpus research in Law Mind sources, the terminology itself shifts across eras. Older sources use joint tortfeasors as the primary organizing concept. Modern tort materials are more likely to be organized around the liability allocation framework — several liability, proportionate fault, comparative fault systems — with joint tortfeasors appearing as a subunit rather than the headline category.
Watch also for the interaction with settlement. The question of how a settlement with one joint tortfeasor affects the plaintiff's rights against the remaining defendants — and the non-settling defendants' rights among themselves — generates extensive and jurisdiction-specific doctrine. Historical sources will not reflect modern settlement reduction rules.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary captures the classical common law rule with precision: joint tortfeasors may be sued jointly, in any combination, or individually, and each is liable for the entirety of the damages because each is understood to have sanctioned the acts of the others. The Bouvier's entry traces the unlimited election available to the plaintiff — a flexibility rooted in the idea that the full injury was caused by each participant, not merely contributed to.
What Bouvier's does not address — because it predates the reform era entirely — is the dramatic restructuring of joint tortfeasor liability through comparative fault regimes and statutory contribution rights. The classical picture Bouvier's presents is coherent and internally consistent, but a researcher must treat it as the historical baseline, not current doctrine. The entry also does not distinguish meaningfully between true joint (concerted-action) tortfeasors and concurrent tortfeasors, a distinction that later courts developed with more care.
Jurisdictional Note
Virtually every U.S. jurisdiction has modified the traditional joint and several liability rule by statute. The specific modifications vary substantially — some states have abolished joint and several liability entirely in negligence cases, others retain it for intentional conduct or where a party is more than fifty percent at fault. Researchers must identify the applicable state's current statutory scheme before assuming any rule from common law sources applies.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Vicarious Liability and Joint Tort Liability — Joint and Several Liability (The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia)
Vicarious Liability and Joint Tort Liability — Contribution Among Tortfeasors (The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia)
Vicarious Liability and Joint Tort Liability — Partnership and Joint Venture Liability (The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia)