Parties to a Suit

In one line

Order I decides who may be in a suit, and its most important rule is that leaving out a necessary party is fatal while leaving out anyone else is not.

Why the Code regulates this

Two opposite dangers. If a court decides a dispute without someone whose rights it settles, that person is bound by nothing and can start again, so the judgment solves nothing. If the court lets every remotely interested person in, the trial becomes unmanageable and the real dispute is lost.

So Order I is a filter with a floor. The floor is the necessary party, who must be there. Above the floor the Code is permissive: people may be joined where their claims share a transaction and a common question, and the court has wide power to add and strike out as the case develops.

Joinder of plaintiffs and defendants

Rule 1 provides that all persons may be joined in one suit as plaintiffs where (a) any right to relief in respect of, or arising out of, the same act or transaction or series of acts or transactions is alleged to exist in them, whether jointly, severally or in the alternative, and (b) if they brought separate suits, any common question of law or fact would arise.

Rule 3 provides exactly the same two conditions for joining persons as defendants.

Both conditions must be satisfied, and they are cumulative. A shared transaction without a common question is not enough, and a common question without a shared transaction is not enough. Two passengers injured in the same bus crash satisfy both; two people who separately bought defective goods from the same shop on different days satisfy the second but not the first.

Rule 2 lets the Court, where a joinder of plaintiffs may embarrass or delay the trial, put the plaintiffs to their election, or order separate trials, or make such other order as is expedient. Rule 3A gives the same power where the joinder of defendants may embarrass or delay the trial.

Read those alongside Order II Rule 1, which requires every suit to be framed, so far as practicable, so as to afford ground for a final decision on the subjects in dispute and to prevent further litigation concerning them. That is the policy the whole of Order I serves.

Necessary and proper parties

The Code does not define either term in Order I, but the distinction is built into Rules 9 and 10 and it is the highest-yield point in this chapter.

A necessary party is one in whose absence no effective decree can be passed at all: the person whose rights the decree would determine, and against whom the relief is claimed.