Yes, you can settle with one defendant and continue pursuing your claims against others, and in multi-defendant cases this is not just possible but often the strategically correct way to manage a lawsuit. But the mechanics of how you do it, and specifically the language in the documents you sign when you settle with the first defendant, determine whether you actually preserve your rights against everyone else or accidentally extinguish them. The difference between those two outcomes lives in a few sentences of legal text that most people have never been asked to read carefully before, and understanding what those sentences mean before you sign anything is one of the most important things in this article.

Start with the basic structure. When more than one party is responsible for your injuries, you have claims against each of them. A truck accident might involve the driver, the trucking company that employed him, and a maintenance contractor who failed to repair the brakes. A slip and fall might involve the property owner and a third-party cleaning company. A medical negligence case might involve a surgeon, a hospital, and an anesthesiologist employed by a separate group. Each of these parties has their own liability exposure, their own insurance, and their own attorney. They are co-defendants, but they are legally distinct entities, and your claims against them are legally distinct claims that can in principle be resolved separately.

The critical document is the release. When you settle with any defendant, you sign a release that discharges that defendant from further liability. The scope of that release, meaning which claims it covers and which parties it covers, is determined by its language, and that language is negotiated, not fixed. A release that discharges only the settling defendant, by name, from liability for the specific claims in your lawsuit is a partial release. It resolves your dispute with that party without affecting your rights against anyone else. A release that is drafted more broadly, one that uses language releasing not just the named defendant but all other persons, entities, or parties who might share responsibility, is a general release, and signing one of those while you still have live claims against co-defendants can be a catastrophic mistake that your attorney may not be able to undo.

The common law history behind this distinction is worth knowing because it explains why the document language matters so much. At common law, a release of one joint tortfeasor, meaning one of several parties responsible for the same harm, released all of them. This was the old rule, and it produced genuinely unjust results: a plaintiff who settled with one minor defendant for a small amount could inadvertently lose their claims against every other defendant regardless of how serious their liability was. Missouri abolished this rule through the Uniform Contribution Among Tortfeasors Act, codified at Section 537.060 of the Revised Statutes. Under Missouri law, a release given in good faith to one of several persons liable in tort does not discharge the other tortfeasors unless the release so provides. The release of one defendant no longer automatically releases the others. But that protection only applies if the release is properly drafted. A release that expressly states it covers all parties, or uses language broad enough to encompass co-defendants, can still accomplish what the old common law rule would have done, and courts will enforce that language.

This is the practical reality: the release your attorney drafts or negotiates when settling with one defendant must specifically and clearly limit its scope to that defendant alone. It should identify the settling defendant by name, release only that defendant’s liability, and expressly preserve your claims against all other parties. Most experienced personal injury attorneys draft partial releases this way as a matter of course, and settling defendants generally accept this language because they are obtaining exactly what they bargained for, release of their own liability, without needing the document to do anything more. But not every attorney is equally careful about release language, and in cases where the settling defendant’s attorney drafts the release rather than your own attorney, the initial draft may be broader than it needs to be. Reading it with that specific concern in mind is worth the time it takes.

Here is the distinguishing insight that most people in a multi-defendant case have never been told, and it changes the strategic picture substantially: settling with one defendant does not just preserve your claims against the others. In Missouri, it also changes the financial dynamics of what you can recover from the remaining defendants in ways that can either help or hurt you depending on how the case is structured, and understanding that dynamic before you settle with anyone is essential to making a good decision about the order and terms of each settlement.

Under Missouri’s comparative fault system and its rules on contribution among defendants, when you settle with one defendant and continue against the others, the settlement amount paid by the first defendant is credited against any judgment you later obtain against the remaining defendants. This credit, sometimes called a settlement credit or setoff, reduces what the non-settling defendants owe you by the amount the settling defendant already paid. If the settling defendant paid $50,000 and a jury later awards you $200,000 against the remaining defendants, those defendants owe you $150,000, not $200,000. This makes intuitive sense as a matter of preventing double recovery, but it creates strategic complexity around the sequence and amount of individual settlements that is worth thinking through carefully with your attorney before any individual defendant settles.

The interaction between Missouri’s pure comparative fault system and the settlement credit is particularly important in cases where defendants have meaningfully different degrees of fault. Missouri follows pure comparative fault, meaning that fault is apportioned among all responsible parties including the plaintiff, and each defendant is liable only for their proportionate share of the damages. When a defendant settles before trial, the jury at the remaining trial may still be asked to apportion fault to the settling defendant, even though they are no longer a party to the case. The settling defendant’s percentage of fault, as determined by the jury, affects how much the remaining defendants owe. If the jury assigns the settling defendant forty percent of the fault and the remaining defendants sixty percent of a $300,000 verdict, the remaining defendants owe $180,000, minus the credit for what the settling defendant already paid. If the settling defendant paid $100,000 in settlement, the remaining defendants owe $80,000. If they paid $150,000, the remaining defendants might owe nothing, or might even argue for a credit beyond the verdict amount depending on how the numbers work out.

This arithmetic is not abstract. It means that the amount a settling defendant pays, relative to their proportionate share of fault as the jury will likely find it, determines whether that settlement helps or hurts the remaining case. A settling defendant who pays substantially above their likely fault share puts more money in the plaintiff’s pocket overall and leaves less for the remaining defendants to dispute. A settling defendant who pays substantially below their likely fault share may generate a credit at trial that the remaining defendants use to reduce what they owe, potentially leaving you worse off than if the early settlement had never happened. Negotiating each individual settlement with an eye toward how it positions the remaining case, not just as an isolated transaction, is one of the more sophisticated things a multi-defendant personal injury case demands.

The good faith settlement requirement adds another layer to this analysis. In Missouri, a settling defendant is entitled to the protection of Section 537.060 only if the settlement is made in good faith. A settlement that is not made in good faith, one that is collusive, fraudulent, or designed to manipulate the apportionment of fault to the detriment of the non-settling defendants, can be challenged by those non-settling defendants. This challenge is most commonly raised when a plaintiff settles with one defendant for a disproportionately low amount in exchange for some benefit other than the settlement payment, or when the settlement is structured in a way that shifts a disproportionate share of fault to the non-settling defendants. Courts have developed a body of law around what constitutes good faith in the settlement context, and while most settlements satisfy the standard, knowing that non-settling defendants have this procedural tool matters when you are structuring an unusual settlement arrangement.

One scenario that arises frequently and requires careful handling is the mary carter agreement, a settlement structure in which one defendant settles with the plaintiff but remains a party to the case, often with a financial interest in the size of the ultimate verdict. These arrangements are complex, are subject to disclosure requirements in most jurisdictions, and have been treated with varying degrees of judicial suspicion. Missouri courts have addressed mary carter agreements in a handful of cases, and while they are not categorically prohibited, they require careful structuring and full disclosure to avoid being set aside. If your case involves a settling defendant remaining as an active participant for tactical reasons, this is an area that requires specific attention from your attorney beyond routine settlement practice.

Insurance coverage in multi-defendant cases also creates strategic considerations that most plaintiffs never see. Each defendant has their own liability insurer, and those insurers have their own interests that do not always align with each other or with their mutual interest in minimizing your recovery. Co-defendants sometimes turn on each other, asserting cross-claims for contribution or indemnity that create adversarial dynamics within the defense side of the case. A trucking company might argue that the driver’s independent negligence, rather than any corporate policy or practice, was the sole cause of the accident, deflecting the highest-value claims away from the deeper-pocketed defendant. A property owner might argue that the independent contractor who performed the maintenance, not the owner’s own negligence, is fully responsible. These cross-claim dynamics can actually create opportunities for the plaintiff, because a defendant who is fighting with their co-defendant is sometimes more motivated to settle quickly and cooperatively with the plaintiff to simplify their own situation and eliminate one front of the litigation.

The decision about when and in what order to settle with individual defendants is one of the most consequential strategic choices in a multi-defendant case, and it is one that few clients are brought into as full participants. You should understand the basic financial structure of any proposed partial settlement before you agree to it, including how the settlement credit will affect what you can recover from the remaining defendants, what fault percentage the settling defendant is likely to receive from the jury, and whether the proposed payment is reasonable relative to that expected fault share. You should also confirm that the release language is limited to the settling defendant and expressly preserves your claims against everyone else. These are not technical questions that can be delegated entirely to your attorney. They are questions about your money and your rights, and you are entitled to have them answered in terms you actually understand before you sign.

The broader principle that underlies all of this is one that most plaintiffs in multi-defendant cases need to hear directly: the fact that you can settle with one defendant while suing another means that your case has strategic flexibility that a single-defendant case does not. A defendant who knows they are one of several targets may settle more readily to exit a lawsuit than they would if they were the only defendant, because their legal exposure is real but their share of the overall damages is bounded by their proportionate fault. A defendant with limited insurance coverage may be a strong candidate for early settlement that both secures a guaranteed recovery from their policy and simplifies the remaining case. A highly culpable defendant with deep pockets may be worth holding in the case all the way through trial rather than settling early, because their presence keeps the most significant source of recovery at the table. Thinking about each defendant’s settlement potential individually, rather than treating all the defendants as a single unit to be resolved all at once, is the strategic discipline that separates well-managed multi-defendant cases from chaotic ones.

If you are in a case with multiple defendants and no one has walked you through how the settlement credits, fault apportionment, and release language interact with each other, that conversation needs to happen before any individual settlement is accepted. The document you sign when you settle with the first defendant can either preserve your options or foreclose them, and you will not know which one it does unless you read it with that specific question in mind.

This article is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Missouri statutes and case law governing releases, contribution among tortfeasors, comparative fault, settlement credits, and good faith settlement requirements are subject to interpretation and change. The strategic considerations described here depend heavily on the specific facts, defendants, and insurance coverage involved in each case. Nothing in this article should be relied upon as legal advice specific to your situation. If you have a personal injury case involving multiple defendants, consult a licensed personal injury attorney in your state before accepting any partial settlement or signing any release.