Opinion ID: 1952246
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Francis's Proposed Cure

Text: Francis argues that if she is not a proper plaintiff-appellant, and if she has not named the proper defendant, then the trial court should have granted her leave to name a proper plaintiff and defendant. In support of this position, Francis invokes two rules of civil procedure. To find a proper plaintiff, Francis cites Super.Ct.Civ.R. 17(a): No action shall be dismissed on the ground that it is not prosecuted in the name of the real party in interest until a reasonable time has been allowed after objection for ratification of commencement of the action by, or joinder or substitution of, the real party in interest.... For a proper defendant, Francis relies on Super.Ct.Civ.R. 19(a), which provides in relevant part that the court shall join as a party any person in whose absence complete relief cannot be accorded among those already parties. A. Rule 17(a) Francis raised the Rule 17(a) issue as a fallback argument, which the trial court rejected without explanation. We conclude as a matter of law that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying Francis's Rule 17 motion. See ICON Group, Inc. v. Mahogany Run Dev. Corp., 829 F.2d 473, 476 & n. 3 (3d Cir.1987) (holding that standard of review for Rule 17 and 19 dismissals is abuse of discretion); see also Arabian Am. Oil Co. v. Scarfone, 939 F.2d 1472, 1477 (11th Cir.1991). Rule 17(a) should be applied only to cases in which substitution of the real party in interest is necessary to avoid injustice. 6A CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT, ARTHUR R. MILLER & MARY KAY KANE, FEDERAL PRACTICE & PROCEDURE § 1555 (2d ed.) (hereinafter WRIGHT, MILLER & KANE). We do not face here a situation in which a party has made a technical error in attempting to bring a suit for another. See, e.g., Duckett v. District of Columbia, 654 A.2d 1288, 1291 (D.C.1995). Francis did not proffer who the proper plaintiff would be; nor did she demonstrate that anyone other than Francis wished to carry the suit forward. Nor has Francis attempted to name another, proper defendant. To allow Francis to hunt up a new plaintiff and a new defendant simply to maintain an action that has neither a proper plaintiff nor a proper defendant to begin with hardly seems calculated to avoid injustice when the interests of all affected persons are considered. Federal courts interpreting Rule 17 have made it clear that the rule protects plaintiffs against honest mistakes and technical errors; it cannot be used to preserve or generate causes of action. See, e.g., Consumer Fed'n of Am. v. Upjohn Co., 346 A.2d 725, 729 (D.C.1975) (holding that dismissal of suit where representative organization had no standing, rather than allowing organization to find affected members and add them to complaint, was consistent with the spirit of Super.Ct.Civ.R. 17(a)); United States ex rel. Wulff v. CMA, Inc., 890 F.2d 1070, 1075 (9th Cir.1989) (Rule 17(a) is the codification of the salutary principle that an action should not be forfeited because of an honest mistake; it is not a provision to be distorted by parties to circumvent the limitations period.); O'Donnell v. Kusper, 602 F.Supp. 619, 624 (N.D.Ill.1985) (Rule 17(a) is intended to allow substitution when an improper plaintiff has been inadvertently named; it is not intended to permit an attorney to locate and substitute a new plaintiff, suing upon a new claim, simply to sustain a pending action.). We also conclude, in this particular case, that allowing Francis to go back to ask DAS to ratify her complaint after the case had progressed as far as it had in the trial court would be altogether inappropriate. [W]hen the determination of the right party to bring the action [is] not difficult ... the action should be dismissed. 6A WRIGHT, MILLER & KANE § 1555. In this case, the statute and legislative history clearly identify DAS as the only appropriate plaintiff. In any event, to allow Francis to begin the action and then seek DAS's ratification would defeat the purpose of the Procurement Practices Act to centralize in DAS the decision to initiate review of CAB decisions. See supra part V.B. Accordingly, we reject Francis's argument that the trial court abused its discretion by not permitting her to seek ratification of the action by DAS under Rule 17(a). B. Rule 19 We note at the outset that defendant RSI did not seek dismissal under Super.Ct.Civ.R. 19(b) (failure to join an indispensable party) but did so under Super.Ct.Civ.R. 12(b)(6) (failure to state a claim for which relief can be granted). Nor did the trial court invoke Rule 19 as a ground for dismissal. [12] The only one who has invoked Rule 19 is Francis. Francis's invocation of Rule 19, however, is problematic in a number of ways. First, we have decided that Francis has no right to bring this action and no right to seek a proper plaintiff to ratify her complaint. See supra parts V, VI.A. Second, Francis asks here not for the joinder of a necessary party but for the substitution of the correct party for an incorrect one. We have stated that [j]oinder under [Rule 19] is ... designed to protect those already parties from the possibility of multiple suits concerning the same dispute. Raskauskas v. Temple Realty Co., 589 A.2d 17, 21 (D.C.1991) (emphasis added). Replacing RSI with the CAB does not protect anyone who is already a proper party from any future potential litigation, particularly where Francis herself must drop out of the litigation. Finally, Francis raises Rule 19 as a plaintiff who seeks to substitute one defendant for another, but she has cited no case or relevant authority for using Rule 19 in that way. [13] We agree with RSI that the appropriate path for Francis would have been to amend her complaint to add CAB and drop RSI. See Super.Ct.Civ.R. 15(a), 21. Her failure to do so is not necessarily fatal, however, since we have said we will not penalize plaintiffs for inept and inartful pleadings if a desire to amend is implicit in plaintiff's arguments. See Keith v. Washington, 401 A.2d 468, 471-72 (D.C.1979) (remanding so trial court could consider whether to allow plaintiff to amend complaint to add District as defendant when claims against other defendants dismissed and plaintiff had orally offered to amend in trial court, and it was unclear whether plaintiff had in fact already named District as defendant). Nonetheless, for reasons that follow, even if we assume for the sake of argument that Francis had authority to bring this suit and had asked the court for permission to amend, we would affirm the trial court's dismissal of the action. See Johnson v. Fairfax Village Condominium IV Unit Owners Ass'n, 641 A.2d 495, 501 (D.C.1994) (noting that grant or denial of leave to amend complaint is reviewed for abuse of discretion). Francis argues that the trial court, in refusing to allow her to join the proper defendant, elevated form over substance. Francis also says that, because RSI undoubtedly would have intervened, RSI suffered no real harm as a result of being named the defendant. Francis, therefore, claims abuse of trial court discretion in failing to substitute the proper defendant, the CAB. She relies on our recent decision in District of Columbia Dept. of Admin. Servs. v. International Bhd. of Police Officers, Local 445, 680 A.2d 434 (D.C.1996) (hereinafter IBPO ), where we reversed a trial court dismissal for failure to name the agency as respondent in the caption of a petition for review. A comparison of the facts in the two cases, however, demonstrates why IBPO has no relevance here. In IBPO, DAS named IBPO as respondent in the caption of a petition seeking review of an order of the Public Employee Retirement Board (PERB) favorable to IBPO. DAS used the standard form for a petition for review found in the appendix to Super.Ct.Civ. Agency Rev.R. 1. DAS served both the IBPO general counsel and the Director of PERB. PERB immediately moved to intervene. All parties consented to PERB's intervention. In its reply to IBPO's motion to dismiss, DAS responded to PERB's, as well as to IBPO's, briefs. At no time did DAS argue that PERB was not a necessary party to the action. See id. at 435-36, 438. Accordingly, none of the parties behaved any differently from the ways they would have behaved if PERB, rather than IBPO, had been named in the caption of the petition as respondent, and thus none of the parties could claim any prejudice from DAS's mistake. See id. at 438. [14] Here, however, Francis did not use the standard form found in the appendix to Super.Ct.Civ. Agency Rev.R. 1; she used the standard form for a civil complaint. See supra note 1. Nor did Francis serve the CAB or treat CAB as a necessary party. See supra note 1. To the contrary, Francis has argued vigorously that the CAB is not a necessary party, and at every level of this action Francis has fought against including the CAB as a party. Nor did the CAB make any effort to intervene in the action. In contrast with IBPO, the trial court did not have the benefit of the agency's input and defense of its actions. In IBPO, we held that the trial court abused its discretion by dismissing the case because the plaintiff essentially committed merely a technical pleading error, without serious prejudice to anyone. We thus emphasized the liberal rule that pleading is not `a game of skill in which one misstep of counsel may be decisive to the outcome'; rather, `the purpose of pleading is to facilitate a proper decision on the merits.' Id. at 438 (quoting Industrial Bank v. Allied Consulting Servs., 571 A.2d 1166, 1167 (D.C. 1990) (per curiam)). Here, in contrast, we do not deal with a technical pleading error. The trial court, therefore, did not abuse its discretion in refusing to allow Francis to substitute the proper defendant when Francis actively sought to avoid suing that proper defendant (CAB) at the expense of an improper party (RSI). Furthermore, we agree with the trial court that joining the CAB will not remedy the wrongful naming of RSI as the Defendant. Francis's argument that RSI would certainly have intervened had she sued the CAB is pure speculation. Francis can hardly claim to speak with authority about what RSI might or might not have done. Even if RSI had intervened, however, and the CAB had been a party, RSI would not have been forced to carry the burden of defending the CAB's decision alone  and at RSI's own expense. Francis further speculates that the CAB might have refrained from defending its own decision and protecting itself from an attack on its powers, and thus might have left the defense of its order to RSI, as putative intervenor, because [t]here is no requirement that the government spend taxpayer's dollars defending private interests. Perhaps. Even so, however, Francis cannot require private citizens to spend their own money to defend agency decisions in their favor  however much that might aid the District in times of financial difficulty  as Francis appears to suggest here. The decision to defend an agency decision (or not) rests entirely with the agency challenged, here the CAB. Finally, an intervenor does not have the status of a defendant. See Dankman, 443 A.2d at 516-19 (opinion of Harris, J.). In IBPO, we concluded that the court should allow DAS to proceed, despite possible prejudice to IBPO from forcing it to participate, for three reasons. First, DAS had every right to petition the court for review. IBPO, 680 A.2d at 438. Second, PERB had acted, for all practical purposes, as the respondent it truly [was], id., and the trial court had the full benefit of PERB's participation, see id. Third, IBPO could be made whole by dismissal of IBPO as a party and an award of IBPO's costs. See id. None of these factors is present here. Francis did not have the right to pursue this action, the CAB has not participated in any way, and Francis has actively opposed awarding RSI its costs. Francis cites two cases in which we have required the trial court to join a necessary party under Rule 19: Capital City Corp. v. Johnson, 646 A.2d 325 (D.C.1994), and Raskauskas v. Temple Realty Co., 589 A.2d 17 (D.C.1991). In those cases, however, we required the court to join an indispensable party when other parties already had been properly named as defendants. Indeed, as we noted above, Raskauskas stands for the proposition that joinder protects those already party to the action. See Raskauskas, 589 A.2d at 21. Francis has cited no case, other than IBPO, where we have required the addition of a party when none of the parties named as a defendant had been properly named as such; and Francis has certainly cited no case in which there were not only no properly named defendants but also no proper plaintiff  as in this case. Viewing Francis's request to substitute defendants as a motion to amend under Rule 15, we have stated that leave to amend the complaint under Super.Ct.Civ.R. 15 is left to the discretion of the trial court. See Gordon v. Raven Sys. & Research, Inc., 462 A.2d 10, 13 (D.C.1983). It is the responsibility of the trial court, when exercising its discretion, to fashion a ruling by balancing a variety of factors. Among those factors are the length of the pendency of the proceedings, the existence of bad faith or dilatory motive, prejudice to the opposing party ... and the orderly administration of justice. Id. As described above, Francis never served or otherwise notified the CAB that it would become a party. Indeed, Francis fought to keep the CAB out of this action altogether, and in the entire two year history of this litigation Francis has made no affirmative effort to bring the CAB into it. At best, Francis has asked the court  but only if the court finds it absolutely necessary  to bring the CAB in on the court's own motion. Furthermore, Francis's actions have been extremely prejudicial to RSI, which has been forced to carry on the action alone because of Francis's adamant resistance to naming the CAB. Needless to say, although we do not impute to Francis any bad faith or dilatory motive, [15] such actions are inconsistent with the orderly administration of justice. Therefore, even if Francis had the right to amend the complaint, and even if we read Francis's arguments regarding Rule 19 as implying a desire to amend under Rules 15 and 21, we would affirm the trial court's refusal to substitute CAB for RSI as the defendant.