Randleel v. Pizza Hut of America, Inc.

182 F.R.D. 542, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 20795, 1998 WL 652652
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Illinois
DecidedAugust 13, 1998
DocketNo. 97 C 5400
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 182 F.R.D. 542 (Randleel v. Pizza Hut of America, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Randleel v. Pizza Hut of America, Inc., 182 F.R.D. 542, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 20795, 1998 WL 652652 (N.D. Ill. 1998).

Opinion

ORDER

ROSEMOND, United States Magistrate Judge.

Before the Court is “Defendant’s Motion To Sever Claims ”. The motion is granted.

Two groups of plaintiffs — the Chicago plaintiffs and the St. Louis plaintiffs — have asserted a single claim against Pizza Hut for public accommodation discrimination on account of race. The two groups comprise forty-one individuals of various ages. They are misjoined as plaintiffs.

The two plaintiff groups do not satisfy the prerequisites for permissive joinder. Rule 20(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure reads in pertinent part as follows: Rule 20. Permissive Joinder of Parties.

(a) Permissive Joinder. All persons may join in one action as plaintiffs if they assert any right to relief jointly, severally, or in the alternative in respect of or arising out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences and if any question of law or fact common to all these persons will arise in the action.

The Rule dictates two independent prerequisites for permissive joinder, to-wit: “a right to relief arising from a single occurrence or series of occurrences and a common question of law or fact”1 Both of these requirements must be satisfied.2

By no stretch can the Chicago plaintiffs or the St. Louis plaintiffs contend that their claims stem from “the same transaction or occurrence.” The two groups and their claims are separate and distinct. The claims of each group of plaintiffs necessarily involves separate questions of fact.

The Chicago plaintiffs claim that it was discriminatory to deny them pan pizzas after the dining room closed at a Pizza Hut restaurant located in suburban Chicago. The St. Louis plaintiffs charge that it was discriminatory to deny them service because they failed to make advance reservations at a Pizza Hut restaurant located in metropolitan St. Louis. These are factually discrete and unrelated incidents, which occurred two months apart at restaurants in different states, and which involved different management teams and workers.

Plaintiffs can make no rational argument that their claims resulted from “a series of transactions or occurrences.” To be sure, as noted earlier, each group of plaintiffs asserts a claim against Pizza Hut for public accommodation discrimination on account of race. However, it is only in an ultimate and abstract sense that the allegations of the complaint share anything in common, to-wit: all deal with purported racial discrimination in public accommodation and the same defendant is involved.3 On the immediate and practical level, which must govern the application of Rule 20, the factual scenarios underlying each incident are different, the times are different, and the people involved are different.4 As put by the senior sage of the Court, The Honorable Milton I. Shadur, when confronted with a similar factual scenario:

To be sure, each [inmate plaintiff] contests the constitutional adequacy of his disciplinary hearing. But the hearings were con[544]*544ducted by different people at different times to consider different charges.5

It must be remembered that the plaintiffs do not allege a common discriminatory policy or practice of Pizza Hut which resulted in the alleged denial of service two months apart in Midlothian, Illinois and St. Louis, Missouri. Instead, this case involves actions taken by different restaurant managers, under different circumstances, for different reasons. There simply is no claim that Pizza Hut repeatedly discriminated against African-Americans by pretending that restaurants had run out of pan pizza dough or by asserting that they closed the dining room because they were understaffed. Nor is there any claim that Pizza Hut discriminated against African-Americans by requiring that large parties make reservations. Thus, the two cases can not be kept together on the ground that a common discriminatory policy is involved:

Here, the only connection between [Chicago] plaintiffs’] — cause of action and [St. Louis] plaintiffs’] ... cause of action is that both [groups of] plaintiffs] are [African-Americans] and recovery is sought under the same legal theory [ie., race discrimination] against defendanf] [Pizza Hut].6

As noted earlier, the instant causes of action arose at two geographically isolated locations. Perforce, witnesses and matters of proof will differ as to the two claims:

Who would be witnesses? What evidence would be heard? What would be the order of proof?7

For all intent and purposes, there would inescapably be two trials confusingly squeezed into one. No St. Louis manager or employee has any probative evidence to offer with respect to the June 1st, 1996 Midlothian incident, and vice versa. No Chicago plaintiff has any probative evidence to proffer with respect to the March 30, 1996 St. Louis incident, and vice versa. The factual and legal questions between the Chicago plaintiffs and the defendant are based wholly upon the separate acts of the defendant with respect to them. The same is true for the St. Louis plaintiffs. There simply is no interrelated series of events or transactions producing the two claims at issue:

For example, assume 4 automobiles, A, B, C, and D. A and B collide, causing B to strike C, which in turn strikes D, parked at a curb. Here is a series of events which will produce multiple claims. However, all possible claims will have stemmed from a common transaction or event, namely the collision of A and B. Further, assume A was at fault in the example; and further assume that 10 minutes earlier on the same highway, A negligently caused a collision involving E. Could it fairly be said that the claims of B, C and D have any common question of law or fact with E’s claim against A? The[y] are [a] separate series of events or transactions.8

The above-quoted illustration reflects the posture of the instant litigation. Accordingly, there is but one perspective, the two plaintiff groups are simply two entirely separate civil rights actions having no connection factually with each other whatsoever.9

No rational basis for joinder exists. As discussed more fully above, the fact that in March of 1996 and June of 1996, two unrelated groups of African-Americans appeared at two separately managed Pizza Hut restaurants, in different states, 300 miles apart and had difficulty receiving service is not a common series of transactions. The alleged civil rights violations of the Chicago plaintiffs and the St. Louis plaintiffs are indeed similar, to-wit: both groups charge racial discrimination with respect to public accommodation in a restaurant setting, but their claims are not generated from a common source or single [545]*545event. To the contrary, each group’s claims involves its own peculiar circumstances. Each cause of action has its own factual foundation.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
182 F.R.D. 542, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 20795, 1998 WL 652652, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/randleel-v-pizza-hut-of-america-inc-ilnd-1998.