1. Where two or more persons are liable to a plaintiff with respect to the same damage their liability is joint and several. Should any of those liable persons have indemnified the plaintiff for the whole of his damage, he may claim contribution from the other persons liable.
Two or more persons may sue or be sued as co-plaintiffs or co-defendants (joinder of parties). Simple joinder of plaintiffs or defendants is in general terms available to persons who share a right or an obligation, or whose rights or obligations are based on similar causes of action. There are also cases where the joinder of parties is considered necessary and indispensable, i.e. the procedural acts of any of those persons affect the judicial position of the others. This may occur for instance where, owing to the circumstances of the case, no inconsistent judgments should be rendered among those parties, or where the same parties may sue or be sued only in common. Should the prerequisites of law not exist, the court shall order the relevant cases to be tried separately.
2. A non-party who wishes to contest a matter in dispute in existing litigation between other parties may intervene in the litigation during the proceedings before the first instance court or the court of appeal "basic intervention". Such an intervention bears the consequences of the filing of an action and the intervening person becomes a litigant of the trial in question. The intervening person may simply have a legal interest so that the litigant on who's behalf he intervenes, becomes the winning party in the litigation (additional intervention); in such a case the intervening person may (separate additional intervention) or may not (simple additional intervention) become a joint party to the litigant in favour of whom he exercised his intervention.
The confines of the litigation may be further extended through the impleader or notification of the litigation to third parties. The impleader is possible where the prerequisites of a necessary and indispensable joinder of parties are satisfied; it is exercisable by a litigant until the first hearing of the case and service has to be made on the person to whom it is addressed. The intervention may be ordered by the court ex officio.
Finally, notification of pending litigation by any of the parties thereto having a legal interest may be addressed to a third party and grants to the same the right to intervene during that litigation. Should the third party not intervene, he may not be allowed to exercise a third party opposition against the judgment to be issued on the case.
