CONTRIBUTION: SEARCHING FOR FAIRNESS TO LITIGANTS IN A PROCEDURAL THICKET

A thorny and difficult controversy today concerns whether contribution should be permitted among joint tortfeasors in damage actions brought under Section 4 of the Clayton Act.1 Contribution is the right of one tortfeasor, who has been required to satisfy a judgment for which others are jointly responsible, to recover from other joint tortfeasors some portion of his payment to the plaintiff.2 At first blush, if several defendants are jointly liable for a plaintiff's injury, it is obviously unfair to require one defendant arbitrarily to shoulder the entire burden of compensating the plaintiff while other perhaps even more culpable defendants are required to pay nothing. Nevertheless, until very recently most practitioners of antitrust law have thought that to be the case.