The question that decides everything: did the plaintiff share fault?
Under 12 V.S.A. § 1036, when a plaintiff's own negligence is part of the picture, the statute divides liability among defendants proportionally: "each defendant shall be liable for that proportion of the total dollar amount awarded as damages in the ratio of the amount of his or her causal negligence to the amount of causal negligence attributed to all defendants." This is several-only liability — each defendant pays their own calculated share, not a co-defendant's.
A genuinely different rule when the plaintiff bears no fault
Here's the distinctive part. When the plaintiff bears no fault at all, this proportional, several-only mechanism under § 1036 doesn't come into play in the same way, and ordinary joint and several liability generally continues to apply among the defendants — meaning a plaintiff with no fault of their own can potentially recover a full judgment from any one solvent defendant, leaving that defendant to sort out the rest among any co-defendants.
Why this genuinely matters in practice
This split can have real, practical consequences for how an injured person actually collects. If a plaintiff shares even a small percentage of fault, they may need to pursue each defendant separately for that defendant's own proportional share — which matters a great deal if one defendant turns out to be insolvent or otherwise unable to pay. A plaintiff with no fault at all avoids that particular risk, since joint and several liability lets them look to any one defendant for the whole amount.
No contribution between tortfeasors, either way
Regardless of which liability rule applies to a given case, Vermont does not afford joint tortfeasors a right of contribution from one another — a defendant who ends up paying more than their individually calculated share generally cannot turn around and seek reimbursement from a co-defendant.
Who ultimately decides
If a case goes to trial, the jury returns a general verdict allocating fault among the plaintiff and each defendant, which then determines both the plaintiff's own reduction and how liability gets divided among the defendants under whichever rule applies. In the far more common scenario of a negotiated settlement, the parties and their insurers effectively work out this same comparison between themselves. See our Vermont comparative negligence calculator to see how sharply the plaintiff's own recovery changes right around the 50/51 line.