King v. Sears Roebuck & Company
Filing
27
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER granting 17 Plaintiffs' MOTION to Amend Complaint and Join Parties with respect to all proposed changes. Plaintiffs are given ten (10) days to file an amended complaint with the court. Signed by Senior Judge David A. Faber on 6/27/2011. (cc: counsel of record) (arb)
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF WEST VIRGINIA
AT BLUEFIELD
JAMES A. KING, et al.,
Plaintiffs,
v.
CIVIL ACTION NO. 1:10-1024
SEARS ROEBUCK & COMPANY, et al.,
Defendants.
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
Before the court is plaintiffs’ motion to amend complaint
and join parties (Doc. # 17).
For reasons more fully explained
below, plaintiffs’ motion is GRANTED.
I. Factual and Procedural Background
This case centers on the injury that plaintiff James A. King
suffered as a result of working with a Craftsman angle grinder
tool at the Sears automotive department on March 19, 2008.
Complaint, p. 4.
See
After receiving treatment, Mr. King, his wife,
and their infant daughter (collectively “plaintiffs”) filed the
instant action in the Circuit Court of Mercer County, West
Virginia, on March 19, 2010, seeking damages for their injuries.
Id. at 6.
Plaintiffs named as defendants Sears Roebuck &
Company, Sears Holdings Management Corporation, and Sears Holding
Corporation (“Sears Corporate Defendants”) as well as Thomas
Hayslett, (collectively “defendants”).
In their Complaint,
plaintiffs asserted the following causes of action: (1)
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deliberate intention in exposing King to a specific unsafe
working condition under W. Va. Code § 23-4-2(d)(2)(ii); (2)
products liability; and (3) breach of warranty.
While plaintiffs
named the Sears Corporate Defendants in all three counts,
plaintiffs named Thomas Hayslett only in the deliberate intention
count.
See Defendants’ Memorandum of Law in Opposition to
Plaintiffs’ Motion to Remand, p. 2; Complaint, pp. 5-8.
Invoking this courts diversity jurisdiction, defendants
removed the case on August 16, 2010.
Plaintiffs filed a motion
to remand on September 15, 2010, which the court denied, by Order
entered February 14, 2011 (Doc. # 20).
In its February 14 Order,
the court also dismissed defendant Thomas Hayslett, having found
that he had been fraudulently joined by plaintiffs for the
purpose of defeating diversity jurisdiction.
Plaintiffs filed their instant motion to amend complaint and
join parties on January 21, 2011.
Plaintiffs ask the court to
allow them to amend their Complaint “for the purpose of adding
and/or substituting proper parties for claims previously asserted
in their Complaint, for making stylistic and non-substantive
changes to the Complaint consistent with the addition and/or
substitution of the proper parties, and for correcting a misnomer
as to one of the original Defendants.”
Amend, p. 1.
See Plaintiffs’ Motion to
Specifically, plaintiffs wish to add three
corporations as defendants in this case: (1) Black & Decker
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(U.S.), Inc.; (2) Anderson Products, Inc.; and (3) Weiler
Corporation.
Plaintiffs also wish to change the name of
defendant “Sears Roebuck & Company” to “Sears Roebuck and
Company.”
See Proposed Amended Complaint, attached as Exhibit A
to Plaintiffs’ Motion to Amend, p. 2.
Plaintiffs’ reason for
adding these defendants is that they are, in fact, the
manufacturers of the Craftsman angle grinder tool that injured
Mr. King.
See Plaintiffs’ Memorandum in Support of their Motion
to Amend, pp. 1-2.
Further, plaintiffs’ proposed amended
complaint would leave out two of the three Sears Corporate
Defendants originally named in the Complaint (those left out
would be Sears Holdings Management Corporation, and Sears Holding
Corporation).
remain.
Consequently, only Sears Roebuck and Company would
Plaintiffs explain that were the court to grant their
motion to amend and join the three new defendants, plaintiffs
would seek dismissal of the two above-mentioned Sears defendants
from this suit.
See Plaintiffs’ Memorandum in Support of Motion
to Amend, pp. 2-3.
On April 14, 2011, this court entered an Order asking
plaintiffs to clarify which Rule of the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure they were relying on in their attempt to add new
parties.
The plaintiffs’ language in their motion to amend
created confusion as to whether the plaintiffs wished to add new
parties under FRCP 19 (Required Joinder of Parties), or FRCP 20
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(Permissive Joinder of Parties).
The court directed plaintiffs
to file their response to the court’s Order by April 24, 2011.
Plaintiffs replied to the court’s Order on June 8, 2011, and
stated that although their motion to amend “was presented to the
court upon a wide basis of authority, Plaintiffs assert that the
primary basis for the relief of joinder would be Rule 19(a) of
the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.”
Plaintiffs’ Response to
Defendants’ Motion to Continue, p. 1.
Defendants agree with plaintiffs that the new parties should
be joined.
In their motion to continue the scheduling order,
defendants state, “To the extent helpful, the Sears Defendants
believe that the parties Plaintiffs propose to join are
indispensable to this litigation and are critical to the defense
of Plaintiff’s products liability claim.”
Continue the Scheduling Order, p. 4.
Defendants’ Motion to
Furthermore, defendants
have not objected to the stylistic changes and corrections that
plaintiffs propose to make in their complaint.
II. Analysis
When a plaintiff seeks to amend his Complaint for the
purpose of adding new defendants, the court must address both the
amendment inquiry under Rule 15, and the joinder inquiry under
either Rule 19 or 20.
Adkins v. Labor Ready, Inc., 205 F.R.D.
460, 462 (S.D. W. Va. 2001) ("In order to amend a complaint to
add additional parties after a responsive pleading has been
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filed, a movant must seek leave of the court pursuant to Rule 15
of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and he must demonstrate
compliance with either Rule 19 or Rule 20, the procedural rules
pertaining to joinder of parties.").
A. Amending the Complaint
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15 governs the amendment of
pleadings.
Rule 15(a)(1) provides a plaintiff with the
opportunity to amend his or her Complaint once as a matter of
course, subject to certain time limitations.
Rule 15(a)(2), on
the other hand, provides that “In all other cases, a party may
amend its pleading only with the opposing party’s written consent
or the court’s leave.
The court should freely give leave when
justice so requires.”
As defendants have indicated their agreement, in writing,
that the new parties should be joined by way of amendment, and
since plaintiffs’ other amendments are either corrections, or
merely stylistic changes, the court GRANTS plaintiffs leave to
amend their Complaint under Rule 15(a)(2).
Plaintiffs are given
ten (10) days to file an amended complaint with the court.
B. Joining New Parties
Plaintiffs and defendants agree that the new parties should
be joined.
Accordingly, and because plaintiffs state that their
motion to amend was submitted based on as wide a variety of
authority as possible, the court finds that joinder can be
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effectuated under Rule 20 (permissive joinder), and it would be
unnecessary for the court to conduct a Rule 19 compulsory joinder
analysis.
The Southern District of West Virginia has noted that
[Rule 20] imposes two specific requisites to
the joinder of parties: (1) a right to relief
must be asserted out of the same transaction
or occurrence; and [2] some question of law
or fact common to all the parties will arise
in the action. Both of these requirements
must be satisfied in order to sustain party
joinder under Rule 20(a). . . . [T]he rule
should be construed in light of its purpose,
which is to promote trial convenience and
expedite the final determination of disputes,
thereby preventing multiple lawsuits. . . .
The test under the first prong does not
require absolute identity of events and would
permit all reasonably related claims for
relief by or against different parties to be
tried in a single proceeding. . . .[T]his
test is similar to the logical relationship
test under Rule 13(a) in which all logically
related events entitling a person to
institute a legal action against another
generally are regarded as comprising a
transaction or occurrence. . . . The second
prong of Rule 20(a) requires that the claims
have commonality of law or fact. . . . It
should be noted that Rule 20(a) does not
require that every question of law or fact in
the action be common among the parties;
rather, the rule permits party joinder
whenever there will be at least one common
question of law or fact.
Wyatt v. Charleston Area Med. Ctr., Inc., 651 F. Supp. 2d 492,
496-497 (S.D.W. Va. 2009) (quoting Ashworth v. Albers Med., Inc.,
395 F. Supp. 2d 395, 411-12 (S.D.W. Va. 2005)).
In the instant case, the asserted right to relief against
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the new defendants arises out of the same transaction or
occurrence.
As previously discussed, plaintiffs wish to add the
new defendants because they are the ones responsible for
manufacturing the tool which injured Mr. King.
As such, the
underlying factual predicate of the claims against the new
defendants would be the same as the factual predicate set forth
in the initial Complaint.
Further, plaintiffs assert joint and
several liability against the defendants.
See Fed. R. Civ. Pro.
19(a)(2)(A) (permitting the joinder of a party where the
plaintiff asserts a right to relief against the defendants
jointly or severally).
In addition, the court is satisfied that the case would
present questions of law or fact common to all parties.
For
example, it still remains to be determined exactly which
defendant was responsible for which part of the manufacturing
process; whether one or more of the defendants knew that the
Craftsman angle grinder was in breach of an implied warranty; and
whether one or more of the defendants committed acts, or
omissions, which caused an allegedly dangerous tool to be placed
on the market.
III. Conclusion
Having found that plaintiffs’ motion to amend complaint and
join parties meets the requirements of Rules 15 and 20 of the
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the court hereby GRANTS
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plaintiffs’ motion to amend with respect to all proposed changes.
It is SO ORDERED this 27th day of June, 2011.
ENTER:
David A. Faber
Senior United States District Judge
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