Rule 17.Parties plaintiff and defendant; capacity

Rule 17 answers a basic question: whose name belongs on the lawsuit? The rule requires every action to be prosecuted in the name of the real party in interest — the person who holds the right being sued on. It then carves out a practical list of people who may sue in their own name without also joining the person they represent: an executor, administrator, guardian, bailee, trustee of an express trust, someone who contracted in their own name for another's benefit, or anyone else a statute authorizes to sue on behalf of another. A case cannot be thrown out because the wrong name is on the complaint. The rule requires giving a reasonable time, after the defect is raised, for the real party in interest to ratify, join, or be substituted into the action — and once that happens, the case is treated as though it had been filed correctly from the start.

Beyond that central rule, Rule 17 addresses capacity to sue or be sued only by pointing elsewhere. The question of a minor's or incompetent person's capacity to sue is left to other statutes and rules, as is the appointment of a guardian ad litem for an infant or an incompetent person, actions by or against public corporations, and tort actions against the state, all of which are governed by their own statutory provisions rather than spelled out in this rule.