Concept
Limits Beyond Rule 18
Joinder of claims
Limits Beyond Rule 18
Rule 18(a) allows a party asserting a claim to “join, as independent or alternative claims, as many claims as it has against an opposing party.”1 That sentence answers one question only: may these claims share a complaint? It does not say whether the court has power to decide each of them, or whether a claim added by amendment comes too late. Other rules answer those questions, and any of them can defeat a claim that Rule 18(a) admits.
Rule 82 marks the boundary. Even when a joinder rule authorizes a claim, the court must have a basis for subject-matter jurisdiction over the claim and for personal jurisdiction over the defendant on that claim.2 The Rules cannot extend jurisdiction or venue.3 The reason lies in what a joinder rule does: it arranges claims inside a lawsuit already before the court, and the court's power comes from some other source. If an arrangement rule could create power, a claimant could carry any claim into any court by attaching it to a claim that court could hear.
Work a problem about joined claims in layers. First ask whether the Rules permit combining the claims. Then ask, assuming they do, whether the court has jurisdiction over the claim thus joined.4 The earlier parts of this chapter addressed the first question, and its answer is almost always yes. The second layer consists of subject-matter jurisdiction, personal jurisdiction, and venue, and a third layer, timeliness, arises when a claim enters by amendment. A claim can clear one layer and fail the next, so each layer gets its own section below.
Subject-Matter Jurisdiction
Joinder raises subject-matter jurisdiction problems in federal court that it rarely raises in state court. A state court of general jurisdiction is presumed to have subject-matter jurisdiction over the claims joined before it, but a federal court has only limited jurisdiction, so each additional claim needs its own basis.5 That requirement and the rules on venue together form the major restraint on joining claims in federal court.6 The restraint often bites lightly, because federal jurisdictional requirements must be observed in joining claims but usually are not restrictive.7 Joining parties raises the same concern, since adding a non-diverse party can undo the basis for jurisdiction.8
The 1938 Rules built this tension into the system. They broadened the joinder of claims and parties, yet many of those provisions would have been of limited use if the traditional rules of jurisdiction and venue governed each joined claim, and the Rules cannot extend either.9 Federal courts used ancillary jurisdiction to balance the two.10 Jurisdiction over a closely related nonfederal claim, once called pendent jurisdiction, is now called supplemental jurisdiction.11
Diversity cases between one plaintiff and one defendant cause the least trouble. Diversity turns on who the parties are, and Rule 18(a) adds claims only between parties already opposed in the case, so adding a claim cannot change the citizenship facts. If diversity permits suit on one claim, the same diversity exists for every other claim that may be joined.12 The amount in controversy works the same way: in a suit between a single plaintiff and a single defendant, the claims may be aggregated, meaning added together, to meet the amount requirement.13
A federal-question case changes the analysis. Call the claim that meets the jurisdictional requirements the anchor claim and its nonjurisdictional companion the supplemental claim.14 When the anchor claim arises under federal law, the plaintiff may not join a separate and distinct nonfederal claim unless diversity exists.15 Rule 18(a) settles whether the state claim may be joined; the remaining question is whether the federal court has jurisdiction over the state claim thus joined.16 The standard problem pairs a federal copyright claim with an unrelated state-law libel claim against the same defendant, both parties being citizens of the same state. No diversity exists, and the copyright claim alone supports federal-question jurisdiction, so the federal court may not hear the libel claim.17
Supplemental jurisdiction is the exception, and the facts decide it. If the two claims are closely enough related on their facts, the court has power to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the nonfederal claim if it chooses to do so.18 The measure comes from United Mine Workers v. Gibbs: supplemental jurisdiction may exist whenever there is a federal claim and the relationship between it and the state claim permits the conclusion that the entire action comprises but one constitutional case.19 The factual link tracks the policy at stake. When parties have conflicting claims arising from a single transaction, it is undesirable to require that the litigation be divided between state and federal court.20 Unrelated claims offer no comparable reason for a federal court to hear them.
The converse also holds: a joinder rule does not take away jurisdiction that a claim already has. In Vodusek v. Bayliner Marine Corp., the plaintiff combined claims at law and in admiralty and named a different defendant in each. The court concluded that the claims could be joined without affecting its jurisdiction over the defendants in each historical department, and it cited Rules 18(a), 20(a), and 82, the last of which provides that the Rules do not extend or limit the jurisdiction of the district courts.21 Rule 82 therefore cuts both ways. It keeps a joinder rule from supplying jurisdiction a claim lacks and from erasing jurisdiction a claim has, so only a claim without a basis of its own needs help.
Step four is where joined claims fail, and the failure is jurisdictional, not a defect in joinder. The libel claim in the copyright problem violated nothing in Rule 18(a); it simply had no basis for federal jurisdiction. Its exclusion from the federal case does not strip it of every forum, since a state court of general jurisdiction is presumed to have subject-matter jurisdiction over joined claims.22 The common error is to carry Rule 18(a)'s indifference to relatedness into this step. Relatedness is irrelevant to whether the Rules permit joinder, yet it is exactly what supplemental jurisdiction examines when diversity is missing.
Personal Jurisdiction and Venue
Personal jurisdiction and venue must also be satisfied claim by claim. The joinder rules confer neither, so a claim that Rule 18(a) admits still needs a basis for reaching the defendant on that claim.24 With subject-matter jurisdiction, these requirements form the major restraint on joining claims.25 The two behave differently when a joined claim is the weak link: a defect in personal jurisdiction over the joined claim remains a problem for the plaintiff, while a defect in venue on that claim is forgiven.
A long-arm provision, a state statute authorizing service of process on defendants outside the state, creates the usual difficulty. A defendant may be properly served under such a provision for one claim yet not be subject to process under the same statute for a joined claim.26 The service that was valid for the first claim does not carry the second with it, and the joinder rule has nothing to say about whether the statute reaches the second claim.
Brennan's difficulty has nothing to do with Rule 18(a). Whether the court can reach Calloway on the loan claim depends on the provision and on Calloway's connection with the forum for that claim, not on the fact that the two claims share a complaint. The layers also operate independently: a claim that clears joinder can fail on subject-matter jurisdiction, as the libel claim did in the preceding section, and a claim with subject-matter jurisdiction can fail on personal jurisdiction.
Venue is the easier requirement. If venue is proper for one of the claims the plaintiff brings, judicial economy dictates that a venue defect on a joined claim be disregarded.27 The defendant is already properly before the district on one claim, and insisting on proper venue for every claim would push the plaintiff to file the extra claim elsewhere and split the dispute.
The two objections come out differently on parallel facts. Brennan's loan claim survives only if the court has personal jurisdiction over Calloway on that claim, while Okonkwo's invoice claim stays in the case despite its venue defect. A student who forgives a personal jurisdiction defect, or who demands that venue be independently proper for every claim, has merged two requirements the law keeps apart.
Relation Back and Limitations
Rule 18(a) says nothing about timing. A claim added by amendment after the statute of limitations, the deadline for suing on the claim, has run is timely only if it relates back, which means the court treats the amendment as though the plaintiff filed it with the original pleading. Under Rule 15(c)(1)(B), an added claim relates back when it arose out of the conduct, transaction, or occurrence set out in the original pleading.29 Relation back therefore runs on relatedness, the one thing Rule 18(a) never asks. A student who carries Rule 18(a)'s indifference to relatedness into the limitations question will treat every joinable claim as a timely one.
The test serves notice. The critical issue for relation back is notice, as Bonerb v. Richard J. Caron Foundation puts it.30 A defendant who learns from the original complaint what conduct is in dispute can collect and preserve evidence about it, and relation back is fair only when the defendant had that chance.
The cleanest case adds a legal theory to the same conduct. A complaint alleges that a lawyer committed malpractice by giving bad legal advice, and an amendment alleges that the same advice breached the contract under which the lawyer gave it. The original complaint told the lawyer to collect and preserve evidence about his advice, perhaps about his entire representation of the client. All the plaintiff has done is add a new legal theory of liability for the same conduct, so the amendment relates back.31
A but-for connection between two events does not establish notice. Suppose a plaintiff sues over an arrest following a bar fight and later amends to add a libel claim based on what the officers told a reporter about the fight. The arrest was a but-for cause of the conversation with the reporter, yet a complaint about the arrest does not obviously prompt the officers to preserve evidence of their discussions with reporters. Notice is thin here, although the claims overlap to the extent the libel claim turns on the truth of what the officers said about the fight.32 Barthel v. Stamm states the underlying idea: a defendant sued in federal court should expect the whole transaction described to be fully sifted, by amendment if need be, without confinement to the first statement of the form of action, the relief sought, or the law relied on.33
Joinder under Rule 18(a) is identical for both amendments, so the difference in result comes entirely from relation back. In the concrete amendment the transaction changed, and in the deposit amendment only the legal theory did.
Relation back does not guarantee leave to amend. Courts treat leave to amend and relation back as “conceptually distinct,” and a court may deny leave, for example when evidence uniquely relevant to the new claim has been lost or destroyed, even though the amendment would relate back.34
Rule 18(a) and Rule 15(c)(1)(B) ask different questions because they protect different things. Rule 18(a) asks whether the claimant holds the claim against a party already in the case, and nothing about the answer depends on when the claim was brought.35 Rule 15(c)(1)(B) asks whether the original pleading warned that party about the events behind the new claim.36