Caption and Party Names

Rule 10(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure governs the first page of every pleading. The Rule requires a caption, the block of identifying information above the first allegation, and it settles two questions about that block: what it must contain and whom its title must name.¹ The earlier sections of this chapter asked which papers count as pleadings. Rule 10(a) asks what each of those papers must show at the top.

A caption lets a reader place a paper without reading its body. In ordinary usage it is the introductory part of a court paper, and it names the parties and the court, gives the file number, and describes the paper.² Each answer comes from information the case already has, so the requirement costs a pleader almost nothing. That modesty fits Rule 10 as a whole, whose form requirements emphasize clarity and practicality over mechanical rules and command only what a lawyer who had analyzed the case would do anyway.³

Contents of the Caption

The first sentence of Rule 10(a) fixes what every pleading must carry at its head: “Every pleading must have a caption with the court's name, a title, a file number, and a Rule 7(a) designation.”⁴ Each of the four items answers a question that a reader would otherwise have to settle by reading the body of the paper:

The court's name tells the reader where the paper was filed.
The title identifies the case by the names of its parties, so the paper can be matched to the dispute it concerns.
The file number ties the paper to one case within that court and separates it from every other case on the docket.
The Rule 7(a) designation states which kind of pleading the paper is, such as a complaint or an answer.

Three of these items are identifiers that every case already has. The designation does more work, because it ties the caption back to the closed list of pleadings. Rule 7(a) permits only a short list, so the label is a choice among a few entries: a complaint, an answer, a court-ordered reply, and the others covered earlier in this chapter. Before reading a single allegation, the reader learns where the paper sits in the case. A complaint opens the case, and an answer responds to it.

The designation records only what the filer says the paper is, and a label cannot settle the question alone. A document is a pleading because it appears on the Rule 7(a) list, so a paper captioned “Reply” that no court ordered stays outside the list whatever its first page says. The caption announces the paper's identity so that readers can place it quickly, and the classification still turns on what the paper does.

The second scene shows a defect of content: two required items are absent. Whether a defect of that kind ever carries consequences is the subject of the later section on form defects. For now, an exam answer about a deficient caption should identify the missing element and treat it as a defect of form.

The caption requirement also reaches beyond the closed list. The rules governing captions and other matters of form in pleadings apply to motions and other papers.⁵ A motion to dismiss therefore opens with the same identifying information: the court's name, the title of the case, and the file number, together with a label saying what the paper is. A motion is not on the Rule 7(a) list, so that label ordinarily calls it a motion and not a pleading. The label gives a first indication of the paper's category, and the paper's function finally decides it.

Naming the Parties

The second sentence of Rule 10(a) turns from what a caption contains to who must appear in it, and it sets two standards for two kinds of paper: “The title of the complaint must name all the parties; the title of other pleadings, after naming the first party on each side, may refer generally to other parties.”⁷ The title is the part of the caption that names the parties. The verbs carry the rule. For the complaint the Rule says must and requires every party's name, and for every other pleading it says may and permits a short form.

The asymmetry follows from what each document does in the case. The complaint is the one paper in which the plaintiff decides who is being sued, and every later paper responds to the roster it creates. Its title is therefore the first place a defendant, a clerk, and the judge look to learn who is before the court. A defendant whose name is missing from that title has no signal on the first page that the case is aimed at it, and the court's picture of the case is incomplete. The Rule does not state its reasons, but the structure supplies them. Requiring every name in the complaint's title gives each defendant notice and gives the court a complete list of the parties in one place.

Once the complaint has fixed that list, repeating it adds length without adding information. An answer or other later pleading operates among parties already identified. The Rule therefore asks a later pleading to name the first party on each side, which ties the paper to the case under the name everyone uses for it, and allows a general reference to cover the rest. The customary general reference is et al. (Latin for “and others”). Because the Rule says may, a pleader who lists every party in an answer violates nothing, and the short form is available whenever the pleader prefers it.

The way a complaint's roster changes over time shows why its title has to track the defendants actually being sued. In Flaherty v. E-Go Bike, LLC the plaintiff first named only Ecotric as a defendant, then amended the complaint to add Mod Vanten, Changzhou Haoling Vehicle Co. Ltd., and Ji Zhaoshan, and Ecotric then removed the action to federal court.⁸ An amended complaint is still a complaint, so the first half of the Rule's second sentence governs it. Its title would have to list Ecotric and the three added defendants, four names in all. A title that still carried only Ecotric's name would give the three new defendants nothing on the first page to show that the case reached them, and a court scanning that page would believe one defendant was before it.

Flaherty supplies that sequence of events and nothing more on this point. The motions before the court argued that the amended complaint was an impermissible shotgun pleading, a form defect taken up at the end of this chapter, and that it failed to state a claim.⁹ The excerpt says nothing about the complaint's title, so Flaherty illustrates why the roster matters without being authority on how Rule 10(a) is applied.

The abbreviation et al. therefore has no fixed status on its own. In the first scene it appears in a complaint and fails, and in the second it appears in an answer and passes, in identical words, because the sentence that governs the complaint demands every name while the sentence that governs the answer allows a general reference. An exam stem that quotes a title containing et al. is asking first what kind of pleading carries it. If the paper is a complaint, including an amended complaint that adds defendants, every party must appear in the title. If it is any other pleading, the first party on each side plus a general reference to the rest is enough.