Yes, and this is one of the most tactically significant options available in personal injury cases involving more than one at-fault party. The ability to resolve your claim against one defendant while preserving your right to pursue others is not a loophole or an exotic legal maneuver. It is a well-established feature of civil litigation that experienced attorneys use deliberately and strategically, and understanding how it works will help you see your case as a more flexible instrument than you may have realized. It will also help you understand why the documents you sign when you settle with any party deserve more careful attention than most people give them.

Multi-defendant cases arise more often than people expect. A car accident might involve a negligent driver and a trucking company whose hiring or supervision practices contributed to the crash. A slip and fall might implicate a property owner, a maintenance contractor, and a property management company. A defective product case might name the manufacturer, the distributor, and the retailer. Medical malpractice cases sometimes involve a treating physician, a hospital, and a specialty group, each with separate insurance and separate legal representation. In any of these situations, the defendants may have different levels of fault, different insurance policy limits, different litigation postures, and very different appetites for settlement. The ability to resolve against one while continuing against others lets you capture certain value from a cooperative defendant without surrendering your claim against one who is being unreasonable or whose full liability has not yet been established.

The legal mechanism that makes this possible is the partial settlement or, in the context of contribution among defendants, a settlement that includes a covenant not to execute or a good faith settlement finding depending on the jurisdiction. In Missouri and most other states, when you settle with one defendant in a multi-defendant case, the settling defendant is dismissed from the litigation and your claim against the remaining defendants continues. But the settlement does not simply disappear from the case. It affects the non-settling defendants in ways that matter enormously for how the remaining litigation proceeds and what the remaining defendants are ultimately responsible for. Getting those effects right is the work that separates a partial settlement that positions you well for the rest of the case from one that inadvertently undermines the claims you are trying to preserve.

Missouri follows a modified joint and several liability framework under section 537.067 of the Revised Statutes, and the interaction between that framework and partial settlements is where things get genuinely complicated. Under joint and several liability in its traditional form, each defendant who shares fault for your injuries can be held responsible for the entire judgment, leaving them to sort out contribution among themselves. Missouri modified this principle significantly, and the current rule in most cases limits joint and several liability to defendants found to be fifty-one percent or more at fault. Defendants found to be less than fifty-one percent at fault are generally responsible only for their proportionate share of the damages. When one defendant settles before trial and the case proceeds against the others, the settlement amount is typically credited against any eventual judgment, reducing what the remaining defendants owe. The specific mechanics of that credit — how it is calculated, whether it is applied as a dollar-for-dollar reduction or as a proportionate share reduction based on the settling defendant’s fault percentage — depend on Missouri law and how the settlement is structured, and they can produce very different outcomes for you depending on which approach applies.

Here is the insight that changes how sophisticated plaintiffs think about partial settlements, and it is one that most people in multi-defendant cases have never been told directly: the terms of the release you sign when you settle with one defendant can either protect or destroy your claims against the others, and the difference lies almost entirely in the language of a document that is typically presented to you as standard and non-negotiable. A release that broadly extinguishes all claims arising out of the incident, rather than specifically releasing only the settling defendant, can inadvertently release the non-settling defendants as well. This is not a hypothetical risk from a distant legal era. Courts have construed broadly drafted releases to bar claims against parties not named in the settlement, leaving plaintiffs who thought they had captured partial value while preserving the rest of their case with nothing left to pursue. The drafting of a partial release is not a formality. It is the legal architecture of your remaining litigation, and it needs to be handled by an attorney who is thinking about what you are preserving, not just what you are resolving.

A well-drafted partial release will specifically identify the settling defendant by name, recite the consideration paid, release only that defendant and their specific agents and insureds, and explicitly preserve all claims against all other parties arising from the same incident. Some partial releases also include a provision addressing the credit the non-settling defendants will receive, which can be a significant negotiating point. The settling defendant often wants a provision that gives the remaining defendants the maximum possible credit for the settlement, because it reduces the remaining defendants’ exposure and may make the overall litigation less attractive for the plaintiff to continue. The plaintiff generally wants the opposite — a settlement structured so that the credit against the remaining defendants is as small as possible, preserving the most recovery potential from the ongoing case. Your attorney’s ability to negotiate these credit provisions is part of what a partial settlement is actually about, and it is a dimension of the transaction that most clients never see but that can affect the value of their remaining claims by more than the settlement amount itself.

The good faith settlement process is a procedural mechanism that exists in Missouri and many other states to manage the relationship between settling and non-settling defendants, and it deserves attention because it affects everyone’s rights in ways that are not always intuitive. When a plaintiff settles with one defendant, the non-settling defendants typically have the right to challenge that settlement as not having been made in good faith. The rationale is that a settlement for an artificially low amount — designed to eliminate a defendant from the case while minimizing the credit given to the remaining defendants — can be used to manipulate the litigation in ways that are unfair to the non-settling defendants. If a court finds that a settlement was not made in good faith, it can decline to give the settling defendant a bar against contribution claims from the remaining defendants, which affects the settling defendant’s incentive to settle and can unwind agreements that seemed final. In practice, most partial settlements survive good faith challenges because courts apply a relatively permissive standard focused on whether the settlement was the product of a genuine arm’s length negotiation rather than collusion. But the possibility of a good faith challenge is a factor that experienced attorneys account for when structuring partial settlements, particularly when the settlement amount is at the low end of the settling defendant’s exposure range.

The strategic decision about when to settle with a cooperative defendant and when to hold all defendants together through trial is one of the more nuanced judgments in complex personal injury litigation, and it involves considerations that cut in different directions depending on the specific case. Settling early with a low-limit defendant captures that money with certainty and removes a party who might otherwise complicate trial by pointing fingers at co-defendants. A strategy called the empty chair defense — where a remaining defendant tells the jury that the real fault lies with a party who is no longer in the case — is a genuine risk when one defendant settles and the others do not, because the jury may assign fault to the settled-out defendant in ways that reduce the remaining defendants’ proportionate share and therefore reduce what they owe under Missouri’s modified joint and several framework. An experienced plaintiff’s attorney thinks about how to handle the empty chair problem before agreeing to a partial settlement, not after the cooperating defendant has already been dismissed from the case.

There are also situations where holding defendants together serves the plaintiff’s interests in ways that have nothing to do with the empty chair problem. When defendants are pointing at each other — each claiming the other bears primary responsibility — that dynamic creates internal pressure within the defense that can drive up the overall settlement value as each party tries to minimize their own exposure by arguing that the other should pay more. Settling with one defendant prematurely can relieve that pressure and allow the remaining defendant to present a cleaner narrative about fault and causation. A trucking company that was sharing blame with its driver, for instance, may become a more formidable opponent once the driver has been separately resolved and the company can focus the jury’s attention on a theory that limits its own responsibility. Whether the value of capturing the settling defendant’s contribution outweighs the strategic cost of releasing that pressure is a judgment call that depends heavily on the relative fault percentages, the insurance limits available from each defendant, and the strength of the plaintiff’s case against each party independently.

The insurance coverage architecture of a multi-defendant case matters more than most people realize when thinking about partial settlements. Different defendants carry different insurance, and the limits available from each defendant shape what a partial settlement can realistically accomplish. A commercial trucking company typically carries substantially higher liability limits than its individual driver, and settling with the driver at or near their personal limits while preserving the larger claim against the company is a common and sensible structure. A property management company may carry umbrella coverage that dwarfs the underlying limits of the property owner, making a full resolution against the management company the primary goal while the property owner’s separate claim serves as additional leverage. Understanding which defendant has the deepest pockets, which has the clearest exposure, and which is most motivated to settle early gives your attorney the map they need to sequence partial settlements in a way that maximizes total recovery rather than simply closing out claims as opportunities arise.

The practical implication of everything here is that a multi-defendant personal injury case is not simply a bigger version of a single-defendant case. It is a fundamentally different strategic environment where the relationships among the defendants, the credit and contribution rules that govern their obligations to each other, and the sequence and structure of any partial settlements can each individually affect your ultimate recovery by significant amounts. If you are in a case with multiple defendants and you have not had a specific conversation with your attorney about the partial settlement landscape — who might settle first, what the release language needs to preserve, how the credit provisions will be structured, and what the remaining defendants’ liability looks like after the first one is resolved — that conversation is worth initiating. The flexibility to settle with one and continue against another is one of the most valuable tools available to plaintiffs in complex cases. Whether it produces a better outcome than holding everyone together through trial depends on exactly how that flexibility is used.

This content is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. The rules governing partial settlements, joint and several liability, good faith settlement procedures, and defendant credits vary significantly by jurisdiction and depend on the specific facts of each case. Nothing here should be relied upon as a substitute for advice from a licensed personal injury attorney who has reviewed the details of your situation.