M.K. v. Tenet
United States District Court for the District of Columbia
216 F.R.D. 133 (D.D.C. 2002)
Six former CIA employees (plaintiffs) sued the CIA and its director (defendants) for obstruction of counsel and Privacy Act violations, alleging the CIA discriminated against them and improperly blocked their attorney's access to CIA employee records. When the plaintiffs sought to amend their complaint to add nine additional plaintiffs alleging the same kind of conduct, the defendants moved to sever the original plaintiffs' claims and block the new plaintiffs from joining the suit.
Whether different parties may join together as plaintiffs in a single lawsuit when the specific actions that harmed each of them were not identical, but arose from a common pattern of conduct.