Brotherhood Railway Carmen Division, Transportation Communications International Union v. Green Bay & Western Railroad

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• concluding that Rule 15(c)(1)(C) is available “where a plaintiff has sued the wrong party or used the wrong name and seeks to amend to substitute the right party or the right name”
• listing North Carolina as among states that “have expressly rejected the concept of relation-back in ‘additional party’ cases as opposed to ‘wrong party’ cases”
• declining to conduct separate analysis under state law after having found no relation back under Rule 15 and reaching same conclusion under state law
• “In the Second Circuit . . . lack of knowledge [of an entity’s participation in the complained-of conduct] does not constitute a ‘mistake’ for relation back purposes.”
• “Rule 15(c)(1)(C) is addressed to the situation where a plaintiff has sued the wrong party, and the right party, reasonably aware of the error, sits on the sidelines while the statute of limitations runs out”
• “In an ‘additional party case .... [t]he plaintiff has sued the right defendant, and simply neglected to sue another defendant who might also be liable. If the drafters of Rule 15 had meant to allow relation back in this situation, they could have easily done so.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).