Title VI: Alternative Dispute Resolution and Trial · Last amended July 1, 2016 · Last verified July 14, 2026
(Adopted March 1, 2016, effective July 1, 2016.)
When two or more cases before the same court raise overlapping questions, Rule 42(a) gives the court a set of tools rather than an all-or-nothing choice. It can join the matters for a single hearing or trial on the shared issues while keeping the cases otherwise separate, consolidate them into one action outright, or issue whatever other order cuts down on needless expense or delay. The point is efficiency: parties and witnesses should not have to relitigate the same facts or legal questions in separate proceedings when one court can resolve them together.
Rule 42(b) runs the opposite direction, breaking a single case apart rather than combining several. For convenience, to avoid prejudice, or to expedite and economize, a court can order a separate trial of one or more distinct issues, claims, crossclaims, counterclaims, or third-party claims. That flexibility has a limit built in: however the court slices the case into separate trials, it has to preserve each party's right to a jury trial on any issue that carries that right.
It means combining separate actions that share a common question of law or fact so they proceed together, rather than as fully independent cases -- which can range from joining the actions for a single hearing on overlapping issues to merging them into one case entirely.
Yes. Rule 42(b) lets the court split off one or more issues, claims, crossclaims, counterclaims, or third-party claims for their own separate trial, when doing so serves convenience, avoids prejudice, or expedites and economizes the proceedings.
No. Whatever separation the court orders, it must preserve any right to a jury trial that a party would otherwise have on the issues being tried separately.
Rule 42 does not limit the request to any one party -- any party to actions sharing a common question of law or fact can raise consolidation, and the court also has authority to consider it on its own.
Common reasons include keeping a complicated case manageable, preventing one issue from unfairly coloring the jury's view of another, or resolving a threshold issue -- like a statute of limitations defense -- before spending time and resources on the rest of the case.