Civ
Pro 2 Notes
Joinder of parties
Say
you’re backing out of a driveway and an
Mosley v. General Motors Corp.
How
is the situation above, separate acts of negligence against a common defendant,
different from this case? They’ve joined
together and they’re filing Title VII lawsuits against GM and their union. Should these cases proceed together (the ten plaintiffs
against one defendant) or should they be severed into ten separate causes of
action? The district court decides to
sever. Rule 20 is the permissive joinder
rule, which tells us that all persons may join as plaintiffs if they assert the
right to relief “arising out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of
transactions or occurrences”. Why do we
have rules like this? It’s a convenience
and efficiency rule. Let’s not have ten
separate lawsuits if they’re all really the same thing. The court in Mosley reminds us of Gibbs:
the rules want to bring the largest scope you can into a convenient trial
package to maximize both fairness and efficiency.
Why
do the plaintiffs want to sue together? This is all a matter of trial strategy
and civil rights litigation. You want
the claims joined so you can see a pattern of bad treatment by a common defendant. You need multiple defendants to be able to
testify! Here, the plaintiffs ask for interlocutory
appeal on the district court judge’s decision to sever the cases. They don’t want to screw up and then have to
try the whole case over again. This is
unusual, though. The Court of Appeals
doesn’t have to accept the interlocutory appeal. But it did here.
The
court in Mosley looks at both “transaction
and occurrence” and “common question of law or fact” in looking at Rule 20. They make an analogy to Rule 13(a). The language is exactly the same, so we
figure it must be able to guide us at least somewhat. Plant used
a bunch of different tests in a wishy-washy way. The court here is willing to look at that as
part of an explanation for why the plaintiffs ought to be able to proceed
together. The Court of Appeals argues that the plaintiffs all suffered under
the same public policy, and that’s why the plaintiffs are logically related to
each other. With the “common question of
law or fact” part of the analysis, the court looks to Rule 23(a), the class
action rule. There’s a provision in that
Rule that requires commonality of questions
in a class. This isn’t a class per se, but
the court decides that the alleged discriminatory conduct becomes the common
factual characteristic.
It’s
all kind of complicated. There are
different classes of people with different kinds of claims against different
divisions. Does the umbrella of
company-wide discrimination hold true?
Lots of civil rights cases proceed as class actions because the plaintiffs
represent not just themselves but also others in the company who suffered the
same harms. But this isn’t a class
action! This isn’t a typical way you’d
see courts be willing to treat ten plaintiffs with different types of
complaints, each seeking relief only for themselves. What could GM do if they didn’t like the fact
that all the plaintiffs are being brought together? Is there any way they can remedy having all
this tried at one time? Yes! Rule 21 can bust up joined stuff…this is misjoinder. Misjoinder doesn’t
lead to the dismissal of the actions, but rather severing them and then letting
them proceed separately. The court can also use Rule 42 to do this: it
allows for both consolidation and separate trials. It’s best considered as an efficiency rule.
In
general, Rule 20(a) isn’t that active a rule in federal litigation today. It’s a very liberal rule that allows you to
join people together. There isn’t a lot
of litigation over this rule. There are
a lot of tools to sort through the complexities of this rule without litigation.
Price v. CTB, Inc.
Impleader
is not to be confused with interpleader or intervention. The impleader rule, Rule 14, doesn’t have a
lot of controversy either. This case
talks about who the defendant can bring in, and we usually think of this rule
as a defendant’s rule. Price hired Latco to build a chicken house. Price later sues Latco,
saying that the chicken house was defective.
Latco says: “It’s not my fault! It’s the nail manufacturer’s problem!” So they want to bring in ITW as a third
party. Latco
says that to the extent their coop is bad, that liability should be shouldered
by ITW. Rule 14 allows you to do
this! A defendant, in Rule 14(a) can
bring in someone “who is or may be liable to the third-party plaintiff”. The key is that you can only implead them under Rule 14 if the liability
is derivative. You don’t have to admit that you’re liable,
and Latco probably said they weren’t. But they said that if they are liable, the liability goes to the
third party.
This
is most often seen in an insurance case.
If you’re responsible for an accident and get sued but you’re insured,
you’ll implead the insurer. This is so
common that the insurance company usually comes in directly and controls the litigation
because they’re the ones who will ultimately pay. Can ITW implead into this case? The court lets them in. There’s a bunch of stuff about
Andy
gets assaulted by Blair, and Blair’s defense is that it wasn’t him that did it,
but
Consider
the original set of facts. Could ITW
implead the steel company that provided the steel for the nails? Let’s check the Rule: is there any reason why
we couldn’t do this? The Rule is
designed to bring in parties to whom you may be liable derivatively. It’s an efficiently rule. Is the “nail as to steel manufacturer”
lawsuit any different than “chicken coop as to nail”? No!
You can string these along for as long as you want as long as you have a
derivative liability relationship. But the
court can still choose to sever these cases if they think that’s most fair and
efficient. But maybe “bad chicken coop,
bad nails, bad steel” is an efficient trial package.
What
if we have a counterclaim by Latco that Price never
paid for the chicken coop? Can they
bring the counterclaim? This is like Plant.
Is not paying for the chicken coop related to the cause of action for
defective production? We look at our
logical relationship test, whatever that means, and it looks like it’s the same
transaction. The coop isn’t being paid
for because it’s defective, so the counterclaim would probably be okay under
Rule 13. It’s debatable, though. Could the farmer turn around and implead the
bank for failing to pay the bills? Sure,
it can be done under Rule 14(b)! It’s a
lot shorter than 14(a), but a plaintiff can
bring in a third party when a counterclaim is asserted against the plaintiff. It’s basically just a reciprocal rule. That’s a perfectly good example of derivative
liability.
Some
of these claims will get in under supplemental jurisdiction, but others will
fail due to poor drafting, oversight, or both!
These situations are pretty much the same, really. If we erase the defective coop claim and have
Latco sue on the unpaid bill as to the plaintiff,
Price is acting the same way in that lawsuit as the defendant as he is here as
the plaintiff bringing in a third-party defendant related to the counterclaim.