Exam #_______________________________
Mammen, Civil Procedure II, Final Exam, SP2011
Page 8 of 8
SECTION II: ESSAY QUESTIONS
(90 minutes total—Part A: 65 minutes, Part B: 25 minutes)
A Greyhound bus was driving from Denver to Chicago. There were 35 passengers on
board. Additionally, a valuable painting by Andy Warhol, with a value estimated at auction
to be $3 million, was in the cargo bay, being shipped to Bonhams, an auction house in
Chicago to be sold. The painting had been owned by Paul Bunyan, a timber baron in
Colorado. When Bunyan died last year, his six grandchildren (his only heirs) didn’t want the
painting and decided to sell it at auction. While the bus was en route, somewhere in Iowa,
the bus collided with a slow-moving tractor owned and driven by Farmer Fred. The bus
crashed and burst into flames. The painting, which was insured by Lloyds of London for $1
million, was destroyed in the fire. Miraculously, only 4 passengers died. Ten were seriously
injured. The rest were uninjured, or were treated and released for minor injuries.
PART A (65 minutes): Three of the injured passengers have filed suit against
Greyhound in federal court, asserting claims for their injuries. Identify the various other
claims that could be brought, including the various ways that claims and/or parties might
be combined (e.g., claim, counterclaim, cross-claim, impleader, interpleader, joinder,
class action, etc.). Assuming there is a single federal judicial district where it would be
appropriate to bring all the claims, could they all be brought in a single lawsuit? What
procedural tools might a judge use to manage this set of claims? Assume that federal
subject-matter jurisdiction exists; however, for each claim or group of claims, what else
would you need to know about party-citizenship to know if diversity jurisdiction exists?
Cite the relevant Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (and, if appropriate, cases). Only write
about the parties actually identified in the fact pattern above – do not hypothesize the
existence of other potential parties.
PART B (25 minutes): Assume that all the claims you identified in Part A have been
litigated, gone to trial, and final judgment has been entered. Further assume that
Greyhound has fully prevailed. During the crash investigation, however, Greyhound
discovered a serious manufacturing defect in the engine of the bus. While this
manufacturing defect did not apparently contribute to causing the crash, it was a
potentially dangerous situation, and prompted Greyhound to check all the other buses in
its fleet—at great expense to Greyhound. Can Greyhound now bring a claim against the
bus manufacturer?