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N.D.R.Civ.P. 21

Not legal advice. Verify against official sources before relying on this text in any legal matter.

Rule 21 Misjoinder and Non-joinder of Parties

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Rule Text

Misjoinder of parties is not a ground for dismissing an action. On motion or on its own, the court may at any time, on just terms, add or drop a party. The court may also sever any claim against a party.

Amendment history: (Adopted Sept. 20, 1979; amended Mar. 1, 2011.)

Plain-English Summary (for reference only — not a substitute for the rule text above)

This summary is not the rule. The rule text controls.

If someone sues the wrong people, or too many people, or leaves someone out who should be part of the case, that mistake alone won't get the case thrown out. Courts understand that figuring out exactly who needs to be involved in a lawsuit can be tricky, so they give everyone room to fix these problems along the way.

The judge has the power to add or remove parties from a case whenever it makes sense to do so, whether someone asks for this change or the judge decides on their own that it's needed. The only requirement is that the judge has to handle this fairly, so nobody gets hurt unfairly by the change.

The judge can also split up claims that involve different parties into separate cases if that makes more sense. This might happen when one case has gotten complicated with multiple parties and claims that don't really belong together, and it would be cleaner and fairer to handle them separately. The bottom line is that having the wrong parties in a lawsuit is a fixable problem, not a fatal one.

Committee Notes

Rule 21 was amended, effective March 1, 2011.

Rule 21 is derived from Fed.R.Civ.P. 21.

Rule 21 was amended, effective March 1, 2011, in response to the December 1, 2007, revision of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The language and organization of the rule were changed to make the rule more easily understood and to make style and terminology consistent throughout the rules.

SOURCES: Joint Procedure Committee Minutes of April 24-25, 2008, page 29; September 20-21, 1979, page 13; Fed.R.Civ.P. 21.

CROSS REFERENCE: N.D.R.Civ.P. 17 (Parties Plaintiff and Defendant-Capacity),N.D.R.Civ.P. 18 (Joinder of Claims and Remedies), N.D.R.Civ.P. 19 (Joinder of Persons Needed for Just Adjudication), N.D.R.Civ.P. 20 (Permissive Joinder of Parties), N.D.R.Civ.P. 25 (Substitution of Parties), and N.D.R.Civ.P. 42 (Consolidation-Separate Trials).

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