Joint and several liability

Joint and several liability is a legal arrangement in which two or more parties share responsibility for the same obligation, and in most common law systems such parties may be severally liable, jointly liable, or jointly and severally liable for it. Under joint and several liability a claimant may pursue any one defendant individually for the full amount owed, or pursue all of the defendants together, giving the plaintiff multiple ways to recover if one defendant is unable to pay. This differs from purely joint liability, under which a failed suit against one party bars recovery from the others, because joint and several liability preserves the plaintiff's separate cause of action against each defendant. Among themselves, defendants who pay more than their proportionate share of a judgment can seek contribution from those who are more culpable, allowing liability to be reapportioned fairly after the plaintiff has been paid. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/