Joinder Q and SuppJ Forum

[TheThriller]

So this may be easily answered but it sent our study group into an argument and we never really got an answer. Hopefully one of y'all can help us.

If a problem states that "Alice, from Ohio, joined with Barry, also from Ohio, to sue Charles, Donte and Esther for breach of the same contract."

The nature of the question allows for different answers whether or not D and E joins C or not. If the prompt reads as above, who joined whom? Some students said that all 3 are subject to joinder, while some said that there has to be one party joining the other 2 and thus that one party is not subject to 1367b's suppj. If all three are joined together, A and B cannot use SuppJ, if C joined E and D, A and B can use Sub J for C.

I guess the idea is that either "joinder" applies to the party made to join or "joinder" refers to the action of both/all the parties coming together.

[arklaw13]

So this may be easily answered but it sent our study group into an argument and we never really got an answer. Hopefully one of y'all can help us.

If a problem states that "Alice, from Ohio, joined with Barry, also from Ohio, to sue Charles, Donte and Esther for breach of the same contract."

The nature of the question allows for different answers whether or not D and E joins C or not. If the prompt reads as above, who joined whom? Some students said that all 3 are subject to joinder, while some said that there has to be one party joining the other 2 and thus that one party is not subject to 1367b's suppj. If all three are joined together, A and B cannot use SuppJ, if C joined E and D, A and B can use Sub J for C.

I guess the idea is that either "joinder" applies to the party made to join or "joinder" refers to the action of both/all the parties coming together.

I was wondering about this question as well. I'll see what I can do. I posted one of the other questions for that exam in the BLL thread, so if you know that one, help a brother out.

The way I read 1367(b) is that the limitations apply to plaintiffs made against person joined under rules...yada yada yada. So it doesn't matter if Barry was an original plaintiff or joined under rule 20. I don't think it would matter even if he intervened under 24 because there's an exception in there for that too. So I don't think any of the plaintiffs can sue E because he destroys diversity.

[TheThriller]

Questioned Answered: There is no "original defendant" all three are considered as a joinder.

Allapattah would have the court technically dismiss w/o prejudice and make A+B file new claim for only the diverse party but in practice all/nearly all trial courts just dismiss non-diverse parties from the action.

[happyshapy]

Questioned Answered: There is no "original defendant" all three are considered as a joinder.

Allapattah would have the court technically dismiss w/o prejudice and make A+B file new claim for only the diverse party but in practice all/nearly all trial courts just dismiss non-diverse parties from the action.

Where are C, D, and E from? If none are from Ohio then it doesn't matter who joins who. There would be diversity jdx and you wouldn't even get into the Supp jdx question. A+B from ohio can sue D,C,E from NY in federal court.

If one of C,D, or E is from Ohio, you still wouldn't get to the supp jdx question because there would no jurisdiction invoking claim for the non-jdx claim to grab on to. That's just a plain and simple violation of complete diversity.

The only way that Supp jdx would come into play here in a scenario like:

A(OH), B (OH) sue D(NY), E(NY) under diversity jurisdiction. E join's C(OH) under rule 14. 1367(a) allows the claim to come in, and there is no limit under 1367(b) because E is not a plaintiff, BUT A or B cannot now make a claim against C, because that would be against 1367(b), and the Kroger case as well.

Also keep in mind that if D,C, or E is found to indispensable to the action (possible in a breach of the same contract) the court will have to dismiss the whole thing (19b), but they try to avoid this usually by saying the party isn't, and dismissing the non-diverse party.