Concept
Different Claims and Relief
Permissive joinder of parties
Different Claims and Relief
Plaintiffs who sue together seldom hold identical claims. After one fire, a tenant may sue in negligence for ruined furniture while a neighbor sues on a lease and asks for repairs. Rule 20 tolerates that variety. It allows plaintiffs to join when “they assert any right to relief jointly, severally, or in the alternative with respect to or arising out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences,”1 and it adds one more condition: that “any question of law or fact common to all plaintiffs will arise in the action.”2
Neither condition mentions a legal theory, a form of right, or a remedy. Each looks to where the claims come from and what they share. Co-plaintiffs may therefore differ in the theories they plead, in the way their rights relate to one another, and in the relief they seek, so long as both conditions are met. The reason lies in what joinder saves. A joint action litigates the same facts once, which buys efficiency and consistency,3 and those savings do not shrink when one plaintiff sues in negligence and another in contract, or when one wants damages and another wants an injunction. The latitude has a limit, which the discussion below marks as it goes: variety in theory and remedy never substitutes for the two conditions.
Two kinds of difference need separate treatment. The first is the way the plaintiffs' rights relate to one another, which is the subject of the phrase “jointly, severally, or in the alternative.” The second is the relief each party demands.
Joint, Several, or Alternative Rights
Rule 20(a)(1)(A) names three ways in which co-plaintiffs' rights can relate to one another, and it makes all three eligible for joinder.5 Rights are joint when the plaintiffs share a single right, as co-owners of a building share a claim for damage to it. They are several when each plaintiff holds a separate right even though one event produced them all, as with each passenger hurt in a single collision. They are asserted in the alternative when the rights exclude one another, so that if one plaintiff holds the right the other cannot. Rule 20(a) allows joinder on any of these footings, provided the same-transaction and common-question tests are both met.6
That permission is new. At common law, joinder turned on how a court classified the plaintiffs' interests: joint interests could be litigated in one action, and several interests could not. Where the rights were joint, joinder was usually compelled, so genuine permissive joinder of plaintiffs barely existed.7 Equity worked differently. Chancellors asked whether joinder would render complete justice among everyone whose interests were involved and avoid a multiplicity of actions, and they allowed anyone with an interest in the subject matter or in the relief sought to join as plaintiff or defendant, though they treated even that formula as a guide and not as an absolute requirement.8 The early codes were stricter again. Under their general rule, two owners of separate but adjacent parcels, both damaged by one tortfeasor's single act, could not sue together, because each was uninterested in part of the relief sought.9 That rule left almost no room for permissive joinder, since a nonparty whose interest matched that of a party already in the case would probably be compelled to join anyway.10
The older rules made a procedural question depend on a substantive label. A court had to classify the plaintiffs' rights before deciding whether they could sue together, and the classification said nothing about whether a joint trial would save anything. The adjacent owners, injured by one act, would have tried the same facts in two courtrooms, with two chances to find them differently. Rule 20(a)(1)(A) drops the classification and asks two functional questions instead: do the rights arise from the same transaction, occurrence, or series, and will a common question arise? That is a departure from the common-law and older code rules, which confined joinder to persons with a joint interest or liability.11 Overlapping interests are still required, but they need not overlap completely.12 Substantive law, not the joinder rule, supplies each plaintiff's right to sue: anyone who can identify a basis in substantive law sufficient to withstand a Rule 12(b)(6) motion may bring a claim, and joinder asks only whether claims so grounded belong in one action.13
Does it matter, then, that one plaintiff sues in contract and another in negligence? It does not.
Nothing in Rule 20(a) requires the plaintiffs to proceed on the same theory, because the efficiency and consistency of a joint trial come from litigating the same facts once, whatever label each plaintiff attaches to its claim.15 The converse holds too. Two buyers who plead the identical defect theory against one manufacturer, but who bought and used the product independently, share no event, and a shared theory cannot supply the transactional link the rule requires.16 A different label defeats nothing, and a shared label rescues nothing; the facts that tie the rights together carry the weight.
Joinder in the alternative shows most plainly why the rule dispenses with the classification of rights. The classic illustration is an English case decided under a forerunner of Rule 20(a). One question controlled it: did the goods the manufacturer furnished conform to the specifications? If they did, the customer owed the price; if they did not, the manufacturer had breached its contract.17 The claims thus ran against the customer for the price and, in the alternative, against the manufacturer for breach. Procedural economy and simplicity pointed to one suit, and the court properly permitted joinder.18 Separate suits show why. The customer could win the first by persuading one jury that the goods were defective, the manufacturer could win the second by persuading another jury that they were fine, and the plaintiff would lose twice on a question that, answered once, entitled it to recover from one defendant or the other.
The standard modern example runs the same way. Quinn is assaulted by one of two officers, Smith or Radiola, and he sues both. Both claims arise from the same assault and share a common question: who assaulted him? Quinn will not recover from both, since only one officer assaulted him, but one trial serves the efficiency and consistency the rule seeks, whereas separate suits could leave him with nothing if each jury concluded that the other officer was the assailant.19
The rule extends the same permission to plaintiffs. When the doubt concerns who holds the right, not who committed the wrong, alternative joinder works the same way.
Tried separately, the seller's jury could find that the risk had passed to the buyer, and the buyer's jury could find that it had not, and the carrier would escape liability for a loss that someone was entitled to recover. One trial yields one answer. Only one plaintiff can win, yet neither is barred for failing to share the other's recovery, a point the next subsection develops under Rule 20(a)(3).
State decisions applying counterpart language reach the same place. In B & M Homes v. Hogan, the court examined an Alabama joinder rule whose committee comments state its purpose: to “prevent a multiplicity of suits, and expedite the final determination of litigation by inclusion in one suit of all parties directly interested in the controversy despite technical objections previously existing in many situations.” The court observed that a variance rule, which required proof of a joint cause of action whenever a joint cause was alleged and otherwise dismissed the entire action, “encourages multiplicity of suits” and was one of the very technical objections the rule was meant to abrogate.21 A variance is a mismatch between what a party pleaded and what the evidence shows. The lesson reaches plaintiffs as well as defendants: a label chosen at the pleading stage should not decide whether closely related claims may be heard together.
Extent of Relief
Rule 20(a)(3) closes the joinder rule with two sentences. Neither a plaintiff nor a defendant “need be interested in obtaining or defending against all the relief demanded,” and the court “may grant judgment to one or more plaintiffs according to their rights, and against one or more defendants according to their liabilities.”24 The first sentence answers an objection raised at the start of a case: that a party has no stake in some remedy the complaint requests. The second governs the end, directing that judgment follow the proof party by party instead of following the complaint as a whole.
Plaintiffs who share an event rarely share an identical stake. If every plaintiff had to want every remedy in the complaint, and every defendant had to answer every demand, only plaintiffs with carbon-copy claims could sue together. The savings joinder buys come from trying shared events and shared issues once, and those savings do not depend on whether the plaintiffs want money, an injunction, or different sums. The second sentence makes that generosity safe. Because judgment is entered party by party, joinder changes who is heard in the case and leaves untouched what anyone owes or is owed.
Plaintiffs who sue for different remedies after a chemical discharge illustrate the point. Roberts seeks damages for crop losses, and other plaintiffs seek other relief for their own harms. The remedies differ, yet every claim arises from the discharge of chemicals by Quantum, and all will likely involve a common question of fact or law, such as whether the chemicals came from Quantum's plant or whether their concentration in the water exceeded permissible limits. Litigating those questions together gains efficiency, even though other issues, such as Roberts's crop losses, remain individual.25 The same reasoning lets plaintiffs with different injuries from one fire sue together, because the rule does not require plaintiffs to seek recovery for exactly the same injuries.26
The clause also covers rights asserted in the alternative. When a seller and a buyer both sue a carrier for destroyed goods because the risk of loss may have passed to either of them, only one can recover, and neither needs an interest in the other's recovery. Judgment according to each party's rights lets one trial end with a winner and a loser among the plaintiffs.28 Defendants work the same way: Quinn can recover from only one of Smith and Radiola, and one trial serves efficiency and consistency where separate suits could leave him with nothing.29
The defendant's side of the clause decided a joinder dispute in Triggs v. John Crump Toyota, Inc. The case involved a putative plaintiff class in which a great many members could seek no relief against one of the defendants, Crump. The court held that this was “no obstacle to the permissive joinder of Crump under Rule 20,” because a defendant need not be interested in defending against all the relief demanded, and it readily concluded that Crump's joinder satisfied Rule 20.30 A defendant's lack of connection to part of the claims bears on what judgment can eventually run against it, and it does not defeat joinder.
Does a plaintiff who cannot show a transactional link save the joinder by pointing out that no plaintiff needs a stake in all the relief demanded? The clause gives no such help.
What the clause does reach is the judgment inside a properly joined case. A plaintiff who proves no right to relief against a particular defendant takes no judgment against that defendant, however well the other plaintiffs do, so joining a defendant never lets one plaintiff's proof stand in for another's.32
Step one decides whether the group may sue together, and the extent-of-relief clause plays no part in it. The clause operates at steps two and three. When a joint proceeding grows unwieldy because the plaintiffs' remedies and damages differ so much, the court's answer is to manage the trial through separate trials and pretrial orders, tools a later section takes up, and not to send the plaintiffs away.