The Current State of Mass Joinder Law in Mississippi

By: Wells Marble & Hurst, PLLC
www.wellsmar.com

Until recently, the Mississippi Supreme Court has repeatedly held that it would use a liberal approach when analyzing joinder issues.  See Am. Bankers Ins. Co. of Florida v. Alexander, 818 So.2d 1073, 1078 (Miss.2001) (allowed joinder of 1,371 plaintiffs against  lender and collateral protection insurer); Illinois Cent. R.R. Co. v. Travis, 808 So.2d 928, 933 (Miss.2002) (reiterated that court utilizes "a liberal approach toward joinder”). In Janssen Pharmaceutica, Inc. et al. v. Armond, et al., 866 So.2d 1092 (Miss.2004), the Mississippi Supreme Court narrowed the boundaries of permissive joinder. The issue decided by the Janssen court was "whether plaintiffs satisfy the requirements for permissive joinder under Mississippi Rule of Civil Procedure 20(a)." Id. at 1093. The court found that the claims of fifty-six plaintiffs against the manufacturers of the drug Propulsid and forty- two physicians who prescribed the drug, were misjoined under Rule 20. Id. at 1102. In order to reach such a decision, the court considered the following factors:

(1) whether the facts and witnesses supporting the claims of each plaintiff were the same (Id. at 1098 & 1101);
(2) whether the volume of evidence would have resulted in jury confusion if joinder was allowed (Id. at 1098 & 1101);
(3) whether the claims of each plaintiff were so small that separate trials would not be justified (Id. at  1098);
(4) whether only a single defendant was named (Id. at 1099); and
(5) whether a trial with the plaintiffs joined would require admission of evidence that would be inadmissible if the claims of each plaintiff were severed (Id. at 1101).

On the heels of Janssen, the court amended the comments to Mississippi Rule 20. The amendment clarified that the phrase “same transaction or occurrence” means that there must be “a distinct litigable event linking the parties.” Miss. R. Civ. P. 20, comment (as amended February 20, 2004). The amendment also struck the prior language permitting “virtually unlimited joinder at the pleadings stage.” Id.

Most recently, the Mississippi Supreme Court in Harold’s Auto Parts, Inc., et al. v. Flower Mangialardi, et al., No. 2004-IA-01308-SCT (Miss. 2004), severed the claims of 264 plaintiffs for failure to provide legitimate claims. The court referred to this type of mass joinder as “a perversion of the judicial system unknown prior to the filing of mass-tort cases.”

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