Concept
Joinder and Jurisdiction
Permissive joinder of parties
Joinder and Jurisdiction
Rule 20 answers one question about a lawsuit: may these parties appear in it together? For plaintiffs, the answer turns on two tests. Their rights to relief must arise out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences, and a question of law or fact common to all of them must arise in the action.1 Both tests compare the plaintiffs' claims with one another. Neither asks whether a federal court has authority to decide any of them.
That authority, subject-matter jurisdiction, comes from the Constitution and from the statutes Congress passes, and a rule of procedure cannot enlarge it. Every joined claim therefore faces two separate inquiries: Rule 20 decides whether the claims may be combined in one suit, and a jurisdictional grant decides whether the court may hear each of them. The inquiries answer to different values. The joinder rules lean toward “the broadest possible scope of action consistent with fairness to the parties,”2 but the limits on federal jurisdiction do not bend for efficiency.3 A joinder that satisfies Rule 20 in every respect can still place in the case a claim the court has no power to decide.
The three subsections below take the problem in stages. Power Versus Permission states the principle and extends it to personal jurisdiction. Supplemental Jurisdiction for Plaintiffs shows how a statute lets plaintiffs added under Rule 20 escape the amount-in-controversy requirement while leaving the citizenship requirement untouched. Misjoinder and Removal then asks what happens when a defendant who wants a federal forum argues that a nondiverse party was never properly joined, a question Rule 20 itself answers.
Power Versus Permission
Joinder supplies permission, and subject-matter jurisdiction supplies power; a federal court may hear a claim only when it has both. That the Rules authorize joinder of a particular claim is not enough to assure that the court may hear it, because the court must also have a basis for exercising subject-matter jurisdiction over the claim.6
The reason lies in where each comes from. The federal courts have only limited jurisdictional power, so if Article III, section 2, gives no basis to hear a claim, “permission” to join the claim under the Rules cannot substitute for one.7 Rule 82 says the same thing outright: “[t]he rules do not extend or limit the jurisdiction of the district courts.”8 The Constitution is not the only limit. Federal jurisdiction must also be conveyed to the district courts by Congress in a jurisdictional statute, as the Court reiterated in Aldinger v. Howard, Owen Equipment & Erection Co. v. Kroger, and Finley v. United States.9
Convenience does not fill the gap. In Owen Equipment, Kroger's claim against Owen, the third-party defendant, was properly joined under Rule 14, and hearing it with the main claim and the third-party claim would have made sense. The parties were already before the court, much of the evidence would have been the same, and the judge already knew the case. The Court nevertheless balked at extending ancillary jurisdiction to supply a basis for subject-matter jurisdiction over the claim.10 Subject-matter jurisdiction does not yield to economy.
The two inquiries can come out differently in either direction. Suppose Nimitz, injured in a boating accident, sues the two other operators, Halsey and Spruance. Rule 20(a)(2) permits the joinder, because one accident gives rise to both claims and whose negligence caused it is a question common to both. If Halsey and Nimitz are both Texas citizens, however, the suit will be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, since complete diversity is missing and a basic tort claim does not arise under federal law.11 Permission was present and power was absent. The reverse also happens. In the earlier illustration in which Nimitz joined Patton and Bradley as defendants, complete diversity existed and more than $75,000 was at stake against each defendant, so jurisdiction was proper. The joinder was still improper, because Rule 20(a)(2) authorizes joining defendants only when the plaintiff's claims against them arise out of the same transaction or occurrence.12 Passing one check says nothing about the other.
Diversity cases expose the gap most often, because complete diversity is measured across the whole action. It is required between all the plaintiffs and all the defendants, and the venue statutes, which usually speak in terms of all the parties on one side, must also be met.13 Picture twelve plaintiffs, eleven from Connecticut and one from New York, suing twelve defendants, eleven from New Jersey and one from New York. There is no diversity, because complete diversity is required, and one of the New Yorkers must be dropped if the action is to proceed in federal court. Supplemental jurisdiction does not remove the complete-diversity requirement.14 Each party added under Rule 20 is therefore tested against every opposing party, and one citizenship that matches an opponent's ends federal jurisdiction over the action as pleaded.
Personal jurisdiction follows the same claim-by-claim logic. Where multiple defendants are joined, personal jurisdiction must be satisfied for each defendant individually.15 Because Rule 20 only permits joinder, a plaintiff can sometimes avoid the difficulty by not joining. Suppose Volt wants to sue Wright, from Maine, and Ellsworth, from New Hampshire, for damages from a Pennsylvania accident. Rule 20(a) lets Volt sue each defendant separately, so he can at least sue Wright at home in Maine, where the court has personal jurisdiction over her on the basis of her domicile. If Volt were forced to join both defendants, he would have to sue in Pennsylvania, the one state where he could obtain personal jurisdiction over both.16
The general rule is that each claim against a particular party in federal court must satisfy the federal requirements of subject-matter jurisdiction, territorial jurisdiction, and venue. The doctrines that soften the rule are supplemental jurisdiction and supplemental venue.17 Supplemental jurisdiction comes from a statute. Before 28 U.S.C. § 1367 was adopted in 1990, considerable uncertainty surrounded the concept of “pendent parties,” meaning whether a defendant with no independent jurisdictional basis could be joined in a nondiversity case with another defendant who had one. The statute ended that uncertainty.18 The power therefore comes from § 1367 and not from the joinder rule, and the principle stands: Rule 20 says who may sue together, and a jurisdictional grant must say whether the court may hear each claim.
When the two inquiries disagree, the usual response reshapes the suit and leaves the case standing. Under Rule 21 the remedy for misjoinder or nonjoinder of parties is corrective action, not a punitive dismissal.19 A nondiverse party can be dropped so the rest of the action may proceed in federal court.20
Exam stems about joined plaintiffs usually hand over the first step, a single accident and a common question, and leave the jurisdictional step to be noticed. A stem with two plaintiffs, one defendant, and a shared collision is not finished when the Rule 20 tests are met, because each plaintiff's citizenship and the amount in controversy still have to be checked. The reverse trap supplies complete diversity and a large amount and invites the conclusion that joinder must be proper, when claims from separate incidents fail Rule 20 however complete the diversity.
Supplemental Jurisdiction for Plaintiffs
Rule 20 gives plaintiffs permission to sue together, and Congress supplied part of the power to hear what they bring in 28 U.S.C. § 1367, adopted in 1990. The statute ended the uncertainty over pendent parties, and it also changed the traditional rule that the jurisdictional-amount test must be satisfied by each party. Claims of multiple plaintiffs for less than the statutory amount may now be attached to the jurisdictionally sufficient claims of other parties if they are part of the same case or controversy.23 The grant is a supplement. It attaches to a claim already within the court's original jurisdiction and creates no federal case out of claims that have none.
The doctrine behind it began narrowly. As late as 1925 the Supreme Court said that “no controversy can be regarded as dependent or ancillary unless it has direct relation to property or assets actually or constructively drawn into the court's possession or control by the principal suit,” a statement that was not literally true even then.24 The rationale for extending federal jurisdiction to ancillary and pendent claims was judicial economy. A narrower rule would have required two suits, one in federal court and one in state court, and the broader rule made the federal court a viable forum in which all the claims could be joined.25
In a case founded solely on diversity of citizenship, subsection (b) takes part of that grant back. It denies supplemental jurisdiction over claims by plaintiffs against persons made parties under Rule 14, 19, 20, or 24, over claims by persons proposed to be joined as plaintiffs under Rule 19, and over claims by persons seeking to intervene as plaintiffs under Rule 24, whenever exercising it “would be inconsistent with the jurisdictional requirements of section 1332.”26 Section 1332 imposes two requirements here, complete diversity and an amount in controversy above $75,000, so the question for each added plaintiff is whether the added claim contradicts either.27
The list in subsection (b) has a gap that confused courts for years. For persons proposed to be joined as plaintiffs, it names Rule 19 and Rule 24 and omits Rule 20. The text therefore bars plaintiffs who are mandatorily joined and plaintiffs who intervene, yet says nothing about plaintiffs who merely choose to sue together, a result that is illogical and appears to reflect an unintended drafting error.28 Before 2005, courts disagreed about when, if at all, supplemental jurisdiction could be invoked when multiple Rule 20 plaintiffs sued a single defendant and only some satisfied the amount in controversy.29
In Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Allapattah Services, Inc., the Supreme Court settled the question in favor of plaintiffs joined under Rule 20. Supplemental jurisdiction may support their claims without regard to the amount in controversy, so long as the added plaintiff does not destroy complete diversity.30 The Court applied it to a child whose personal injury claim against a single defendant met the jurisdictional amount and to family members whose emotional distress and economic damages claims did not.31 As long as one plaintiff meets the amount, additional co-plaintiffs may join under Rule 20 even though their own claims fall short.32
The statute tolerates a small claim but not a nondiverse plaintiff because of what each requirement protects. Subsection (b) exists to preserve the integrity of the complete diversity rule.33 If supplemental jurisdiction could supply a missing citizenship, a plaintiff with no basis for a federal forum could obtain one by finding a diverse co-plaintiff to sue alongside, and diversity would mean nothing. The amount requirement is different. One claim in the action is already large enough for federal court, and the added claims arise from the same case or controversy, so the court will hear the same facts anyway. Turning the smaller claims away would force a second suit over the same injury, the duplication that supplemental jurisdiction was developed to avoid.34
The line shows up clearly in one set of facts with three possible plaintiffs. P1 and P2, both New York citizens, sue D, a New Jersey citizen, in a diversity-only action arising from one transaction. P1's claim is worth $100,000, and P2's is worth no more than $50,000. The action may proceed, because P2 rides on P1's claim for amount-in-controversy purposes. P3, a New Jersey citizen, cannot join, because sharing a state with D destroys complete diversity, and supplemental jurisdiction does not remove that requirement however much P3's claim is worth.35 The same test sorts the child-and-family example, where any family member who shared the defendant's citizenship could not go forward even though the other family members could.36
The neighbors show what the rule needs before it can operate. A smaller claim can ride on a larger one, but when every claim falls below the amount there is nothing to ride on. Every Rule 20 problem in a diversity case therefore carries an anchor requirement: at least one plaintiff must independently be diverse from every defendant and meet the amount.
Plaintiffs who enter the case by another route get none of this help. A person joined as a plaintiff under Rule 19 because the person must be joined if feasible cannot rely on supplemental jurisdiction in a diversity-only case, and neither can a plaintiff who intervenes, whether permissively or as of right.38 Suppose P1, an Indiana citizen, sues D, an Illinois citizen, and P2, an Illinois citizen, moves to intervene under Rule 24(b) because P2's claim shares a question of law or fact with P1's. There is no supplemental jurisdiction over intervention, so P2's shared citizenship with D bars the claim. The result would be the same if P2's claim were so closely related that P2 were entitled to intervene of right.39 Because subsection (b) also reaches intervening plaintiffs, an intervenor who is diverse from the defendant but holds a claim below the amount must satisfy section 1332 on that claim alone.40 Two plaintiffs with identical claims can therefore get opposite jurisdictional treatment, depending on how each entered the case.
The statute also treats added defendants differently from added plaintiffs. Subsection (b) lists claims by plaintiffs against persons made parties under Rule 20, so a plaintiff who joins an additional defendant in a diversity-only case cannot use supplemental jurisdiction to reach that defendant.41 Each Rule 20 defendant must therefore be diverse from the plaintiff, and the amount in controversy must be satisfied as to each defendant, which most likely means a claim above $75,000 against each one.42 Across diversity-only cases, additional claims asserted by defendants generally fall within supplemental jurisdiction, while additional claims and parties added by plaintiffs generally do not. Expect supplemental jurisdiction only for a claimant in a defensive posture, which makes the Rule 20 plaintiff rule for the amount in controversy the exception worth memorizing.43
Step three is where exam stems most often hide the problem, because a large damages figure invites the conclusion that the plaintiff belongs in federal court while the plaintiff's citizenship quietly matches the defendant's. Step five separates plaintiffs who look identical on the facts, since a tenant joined under Rule 20 and a tenant who intervenes under Rule 24 may hold the same claim and receive opposite treatment.
Misjoinder and Removal
When a defendant who wants a federal forum argues that a nondiverse party was joined only to block removal, the court measures the joinder against Rule 20. For plaintiffs the measure is the pair of tests already seen: rights to relief arising out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series, and a common question of law or fact.46 For defendants, Rule 20(a)(2) authorizes joinder only if the plaintiff's claims against them arise out of the same transaction or occurrence.47 Removal sharpens the earlier point that every party added under Rule 20 counts toward complete diversity. A plaintiff who sues in state court and joins a defendant from the plaintiff's own state makes the case nondiverse, so the other defendants have a reason to argue that the local defendant should be ignored. Courts call the argument fraudulent joinder, or fraudulent misjoinder when it is aimed at unrelated parties lumped into one suit.48 Two decisions mark the poles.
The plain case comes first. A joinder that satisfies Rule 20 is a proper joinder, and the joined party's citizenship counts. In Triggs v. John Crump Toyota, Inc., a putative class action, the court looked to the citizenship of the named plaintiff, Triggs, and found no complete diversity, because Triggs was diverse from the defendant Omni but not from the properly joined defendant Crump. The fact that many members of the putative class could seek no relief against Crump was no obstacle to permissive joinder under Rule 20, and the court readily concluded that Crump's joinder satisfied the rule.49
The sequence in Triggs is the template for the ordinary case. The court tested the joinder under Rule 20 first, and once the joinder passed, the party counted, whatever its connection to most of the claims. The plaintiff chooses the defendants and Rule 20 sets the outer limit of that choice. A court that disregarded a party who satisfied the rule would hand the removing defendant a veto over the plaintiff's selection of parties, in a system that strongly encourages joinder of claims, parties, and remedies.50
The other pole appears in the Eleventh Circuit's decision in Tapscott, as discussed in re Silica Products Liability Litigation. After removal, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the denial of the plaintiffs' motion to remand. Because the two sets of defendants were unrelated, it said, the plaintiffs' attempt to join them was “so egregious as to constitute fraudulent joinder.” The court expressly refused to hold that mere misjoinder is fraudulent joinder, and that refusal limits the decision's reach.51
Two features separate Tapscott from Triggs. In Triggs the joinder satisfied Rule 20, so the nondiverse defendant counted. In Tapscott the plaintiffs had placed two unrelated sets of defendants in one lawsuit, so the joinder was far from the Rule 20 standard. The Silica court drew the same line within its own case: for jurisdictional purposes, joining the disparate plaintiffs' claims with one another was egregious misjoinder, while each plaintiff's joinder of his or her own claims against multiple defendants was not.52 If every shortfall under Rule 20 allowed a court to ignore a party's citizenship, a removing defendant could turn an ordinary joinder error into a route to federal court. Ordinary misjoinder is cured inside the case, by the corrective action Rule 21 provides.53
Courts have not settled what lies between a joinder that satisfies Rule 20 and one that is egregiously misjoined. The Silica court quoted another multidistrict court's summary that something more than mere misjoinder may be required to find fraudulent misjoinder, that Tapscott did not make clear what the “something more” is, and that no later decision has established it. The Silica court found it unnecessary to draw the line precisely, because the claims before it fell clearly on the egregious side.54 The sources therefore support two firm statements and one open question. A Rule 20 joinder is proper and its citizenship counts, an egregious misjoinder of unrelated parties may be disregarded, and the boundary between them remains disputed. An answer that announces a single national test for the middle ground claims more than these authorities show.
Step two does the work in most stems. The facts usually describe either a single event or scheme that links the parties, which points to Triggs, or two unrelated groups sharing a caption, which points to Tapscott. A stem between the two calls for the Rule 20 analysis and a note that the boundary is unsettled, not for a confident rule beyond what the decisions support.