Research On Impleader In American Civil Procedure

Impleader is a procedure that allows a party to bring into an action a new party who is allegedly liable to the original party for all or part of a claim asserted against the original party in the action. The historical antecedents of impleader can be found in tne practice of"vouching to warranty"at common law. Federal rule 14 generally exemplifies modern impleader practice in both the state and federal courts. The purpose of impleader is to save the time and cost of duplicating evidence in two proceedings ,avoid inconsistent results on related claims based on identical or similar evidence, and eliminate the serious prejudice to the original defendant that might result from a time lag between the plaintiff's judgement against him and a judgement in the defendant's favor against the third-party defendant. The basis of the third-party claim may be indemnity, subrogation, contribution ,breach of warranty, or any other legal theory supporting derivative liability. It must involve a transfer of liability based on plaintiff's original claim. Impleader is purely a procedural mechanism acting merely to accelerate the prosecution of otherwise recognized claims. Thus, allowing impleader under these circumstances has the effect of accelerating the determination of the contingent claim. Once impleader has been allowed , the third-party defendant proceeds much like a defendant in a normal action. The third-party defendant may counterclaim against the third-party plaintiff, crossclaim against other third-party defendants, and bring in a fourth party who may be liable to him derivatively for any part of his liability to the third-party plaintiff. The third-party defendant also may assert against the plaintiff any claim arising of the same transaction or occurrence as the original action, and the plaintiff similarly may assert transactionally related claims against the third-party defendant. The assertion of the these claims is optional to the parties. The court has the power of discretion to determine whether to allow the impleader , taking into account of procedure efficiency and possible prejudice to any of the parties. It is a good way to reconstruct our country's civil third-party procedure according to the impleader in American civil procedure.