10-1266 The York Group, Inc., v. Wuxi Taihu Tractor Co., Ltd.

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Civil Procedure
Subpoenas; service of process

A subpoena naming a proprietorship, in care of an individual, is effective on the individual.

“Benefield’s argument is wrong on the merits. He describes One Stop China as his proprietorship. A proprietorship is just a name that a real person uses when doing business; it is not a juridical entity. Vernon v. Schuster, 179 Ill. 2d 338, 347, 688 N.E.2d 1172, 1176–77 (1977) (‘a sole proprietorship has no legal identity separate from that of the individual who owns it’). The only entity is the proprietor— here, Daniel Benefield. ‘One Stop China’ and ‘Daniel Benefield’ are two names for the same person. Either will do; both are better. The subpoena used both, to curtail the risk of evasion; this precaution made the subpoena easier to enforce, not (as Benefield supposes) impossible to enforce. Benefield misunderstands Schiavone v. Fortune, 477 U.S. 21 (1986), the decision on which he principally relied in the district court. In Schiavone the plaintiff sued ‘Fortune’, a trade name used by Time, Inc., but did not identify Time as a party. A proprietorship is not a trade name, a bit of intellectual property employed by a larger enterprise. ‘One Stop China’ is the name of Daniel Benefield’s business, just as ‘Time, Inc.’ is the name of the corporation that publishes the magazine Fortune. It is no more helpful to call ‘One Stop China’ a trade name or a ‘misnomer’ (which Benefield also does) than it would be to call ‘Daniel Benefield’ a trade name for someone who really ought to be identified by a fingerprint, retina pattern, or DNA sequence. When filing a suit, or serving a subpoena, it is enough to specify the real party in interest. Fed. R. Civ. P. 17. Either ‘One Stop China’ or ‘Daniel Benefield’ does that, in a way that ‘Fortune’ (without any mention of Time, Inc.) did not.”

Affirmed.

10-1266 The York Group, Inc., v. Wuxi Taihu Tractor Co., Ltd.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Lindberg, J., Easterbrook, J.

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