The legal doctrine known as joint and several liability – you’ve heard the phrase “deep pocket”? – has claimed another victim.

Seattle taxpayers are on the hook for $1.7 million because a police officer had the audacity to pursue an unlicensed driver who fled from him, twice, in a car she didn’t have permission to use.

Naturally, when the woman roared into an intersection at 50 miles an hour and slammed into two pedestrians, leaving them with serious injuries, the police officer was partly to blame. Even if he no longer was chasing her.

The jury found during the King County trial that the officer failed to meet the duty, as spelled out in state law that gives emergency vehicles latitude to ignore certain traffic laws, “to drive with due regard for the safety of all persons.”

The 21-year-old driver, who had only a learner’s permit, wound up covered by the insurance policy of the people who employed her as a nanny and house sitter, even though they hadn’t given her permission to drive their car while they were on vacation. The jury said she/they were 90 percent at fault for the crushed pelvis and shattered knee suffered respectively by Ronald and Jeanette Ashley; Officer Ted Mansour was at fault for the other 10 percent.

Time to get out your calculator.

Total damages came to $4.6 million, so that would be $4.14 million for Ronisha Kelley, who was convicted of two counts of vehicular assault plus evading a police officer, and $460,000 for Mansour and the city of Seattle, right? Wrong.

The insurance company settled for $2.75 million, leaving the city of Seattle to pick up the balance. The trial judge overturned that part of the verdict but the state Court of Appeals in King County reinstated it.

Now, for its 10 percent of the blame the city of Seattle will absorb more like 40 percent of the penalty, because the doctrine of joint and several liability doesn’t care about distributing accountability according to fault.

In a just world, victims like the Ashleys would be made whole for their damages – at least to the degree it’s possible to calculate a price for injuries that are painful, debilitating and lasting. And negligent drivers like Kelley would be held accountable for their recklessness. That applies to municipalities and their employees, too, if they own a share of the blame.

But when Kelley can’t or won’t cover her share of the consequences, shifting them to the city of Seattle – the deep pocket – to pay damages beyond its fair share amounts to resolving one injustice by manufacturing another.

Municipal officials worry, reasonably, that this ruling could discourage police officers from initiating pursuit of lawbreakers, but his isn’t really the court’s fault. The judges are applying the law as written by the Legislature. If corrections are to be made, they will need to be done in Olympia by the people who will go there in January – after being elected a month from now.