## Facts

- Schuler Grain Company hired Voldco, Inc. to design and install grain-handling equipment at a grain elevator to load hopper cars.
- Voldco obtained component parts from Gerber Industries, Inc., including a transfer spout assembly.
- While Tolbert (Schuler’s employee) was extending the transfer spout atop a hopper car, the spout disengaged and fell, causing Tolbert to fall and suffer severe injuries.
- A jury found both Gerber and Voldco negligent, and found the negligence of each directly caused Tolbert’s injury.
- The jury awarded Tolbert $60,572 in damages.
- Although instructed to assign fault percentages under Minn. Stat. § 604.01, the jury attributed 100% negligence to Gerber and Voldco jointly and did not apportion fault between them.

## Issues

1. Whether a negligent installer may obtain 100% indemnity from a negligent manufacturer on an “active/passive” negligence theory when both are independently negligent.
2. Whether, after adoption of comparative negligence, liability between negligent joint tortfeasors must be allocated by relative culpability rather than shifted entirely through common-law indemnity.

## Decision

- The Minnesota Supreme Court reversed the trial court’s award granting Voldco 100% indemnity from Gerber.
- The court held that, where both the manufacturer and installer were negligent and their negligence caused the injury, their respective liability to each other is determined by relative culpability under comparative fault principles, not indemnity.
- The court overruled the Hendrickson indemnity category allowing indemnity where the party seeking it was negligent in failing to discover or prevent the other party’s misconduct.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with allocating responsibility between Gerber and Voldco by comparative fault.

## Legal Principles

- When a manufacturer negligently furnishes a defective product and an installer negligently fails to inspect or detect the hazard, and a third party is injured, the manufacturer and installer are joint tortfeasors as to each other.
- Between negligent joint tortfeasors with independent fault, loss allocation is governed by relative degrees of culpability under comparative negligence, not by “active/passive” common-law indemnity.
- Indemnity is not available merely because one negligent actor failed to discover or prevent another negligent actor’s misconduct; that basis for indemnity is inconsistent with comparative fault and is rejected.

## Conclusion

The court required that negligent manufacturer–installer co-tortfeasors allocate the injured party’s loss between themselves according to comparative fault, rejecting full indemnity based on characterizing one party’s negligence as merely “passive.”


Tolbert v. Gerber Indus., Inc., 255 N.W.2d 362 (Minn. 1977)