John Doe (male) and Jane Doe (female) are multiple-use placeholder names that are used in the United States and the United Kingdom when the true name of a person is unknown or is being intentionally concealed. [1] [2] [3] In the context of law enforcement in the United States, such names are often used to refer to a corpse whose identity is unknown or cannot be confirmed. These names are also often used to refer to a hypothetical "everyman" in other contexts, like John Q. Public or "Joe Public". There are many variants to the above names, including John (or Richard)/Jane Roe, John/Jane Smith, John/Jane Bloggs, and Johnie/Janie Doe or just Baby Doe for children.
A. N. Other is also a placeholder name, mainly used in the United Kingdom, which is gender neutral.
In other English-speaking countries, unique placeholder names, numbers or codenames have become more often used in the context of police investigations. This has included the United Kingdom, where usage of "John Doe" originated during the Middle Ages. However, the legal term John Doe injunction or John Doe order [4] has survived in English law and other legal systems influenced by it. Other names, such as "Joe Bloggs" or "John Smith", have sometimes been informally used as placeholders for an everyman in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand; however such names are seldom used in legal or police circles in the same sense as John Doe.
Well-known legal cases named after placeholders include:
Under the legal terminology of Ancient Rome, the names " Numerius Negidius " and "Aulus Agerius" were used in relation to hypothetical defendants and plaintiffs. [7]
The names "John Doe" (or "John Do") and "Richard Roe" (along with "John Roe") were regularly invoked in English legal instruments to satisfy technical requirements governing standing and jurisdiction, beginning perhaps as early as the reign of England's King Edward III (1327–1377). [8] Though the rationale behind the choices of Doe and Roe is unknown, there are many suggested folk etymologies. [9] Other fictitious names for a person involved in litigation in medieval English law were "John Noakes" (or "Nokes") and "John-a-Stiles" (or "John Stiles"). [10] The Oxford English Dictionary states that John Doe is "the name given to the fictitious lessee of the plaintiff, in the (now obsolete in the UK) mixed action of ejectment, the fictitious defendant being called Richard Roe". [9]
This usage is mocked in the 1834 English song "John Doe and Richard Roe":
Two giants live in Britain's land,
John Doe and Richard Roe,
Who always travel hand in hand,
John Doe and Richard Roe.
Their fee-faw-fum's an ancient plan
To smell the purse of an Englishman,
And, 'ecod, they'll suck it all they can,
John Doe and Richard Roe ... [11]
This particular use became obsolete in the UK in 1852:
As is well known, the device of involving real people as notional lessees and ejectors was used to enable freeholders to sue the real ejectors. These were then replaced by the fictional characters John Doe and Richard Roe. Eventually the medieval remedies were (mostly) abolished by the Real Property Limitation Act of 1833; the fictional characters of John Doe and Richard Roe by the Common Law Procedure Act 1852; and the forms of action themselves by the Judicature Acts 1873–75."
Secretary of State for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs v Meier and others (2009). [12]
In the UK, usage of "John Doe" survives mainly in the form of John Doe injunction or John Doe order (see above).
8.02 If an unknown person has possession of the confidential personal information and is threatening to disclose it, a 'John Doe' injunction may be sought against that person. The first time this form of injunction was used since 1852 in the United Kingdom was in 2005 when lawyers acting for JK Rowling and her publishers obtained an interim order against an unidentified person who had offered to sell chapters of a stolen copy of an unpublished Harry Potter novel to the media. [13]
Unlike the United States, the name "John Doe" does not actually appear in the formal name of the case, for example: X & Y v Persons Unknown [2007] HRLR 4. [14]
Well-known cases of unidentified decedents include "Caledonia Jane Doe" (1979), "Princess Doe" (1982) and "Walker County Jane Doe" (1980), all of whom have been identified. The baby victim in a 2001 murder case in Kansas City, Missouri, was referred to as Precious Doe. [15]
In 2009, the New York Times reported the difficulties and unwanted attention experienced by a man actually named John Doe, who had often been suspected of using a pseudonym. He had been questioned repeatedly by airport security staff. Another man named John Doe was often suspected of being an incognito celebrity. [16]
In cases where a large number of unidentified individuals are mentioned, numbers may be appended, such as "Doe #2" or "Doe II". Operation Delego (2009), which targeted an international child sexual abuse ring, cited 21 numbered "John Does", as well as other people known by the surnames "Doe", "Roe","Hoe" and "Poe".
"John Stiles", "Richard Miles" have been used for the third and fourth participants in an action. "Mary Major" has been used in some federal cases in the US. [17] "James Doe" and "Judy Doe" are among other common variants.
Less often, other surnames ending in -oe have been used when more than two unknown or unidentified persons are named in U.S. court proceedings, e.g.,
In Massachusetts, "Mary Moe" is used to refer to pregnant women under the age of 18 petitioning the Superior Court for a judicial bypass exception to the parental consent requirement for abortion. [21] "Mary Moe" is also used to refer to such cases generally, i.e. "Mary Moe cases". Sometimes "Mary Doe" may be used for the individuals.
Parallels in other countries include:
In 1997, New York City police discovered a decapitated body and were not able to find the killer. The body was named Peaches (murder victim) and also Jane Doe 3.
The use and selection of pseudonyms is not standardized in U.S. courts. The practice was rare prior to 1969, and is sometimes objected to on legal grounds.
Currently there are no court rules about pseudonym use. The rules of civil procedure ... are silent on the matter ... Rule of Civil Procedure 10(a) reads, '... In the complaint, the title of the action shall include the names of all the parties ...' The rule contains no guidance as to what parties should do to keep their names confidential. [30]
Prior to ... 1969, only one Supreme Court case, three court of appeals' decisions, and one district court decision in the previous quarter-century featured an anonymous individual as the sole or lead plaintiff. Between 1969 and 22 January 1973, the date when the Supreme Court decided Roe and Doe, there were twenty-one district court and two court of appeals decisions featuring anonymous plaintiffs. [31]
Res ipsa loquitur is a doctrine in common law and Roman-Dutch law jurisdictions under which a court can infer negligence from the very nature of an accident or injury in the absence of direct evidence on how any defendant behaved in the context of tort litigation. Although specific criteria differ by jurisdiction, an action typically must satisfy the following elements of negligence: the existence of a duty of care, breach of appropriate standard of care, causation, and injury. In res ipsa loquitur, the existence of the first three elements is inferred from the existence of injury that does not ordinarily occur without negligence.
A legal fiction is a construct used in the law where a thing is taken to be true, which is not in fact true, in order to achieve an outcome. Legal fictions can by employed by the courts or found in legislation.
Numerius Negidius is a name used in Roman jurisprudence, based on a play on words: Numerius is a Roman praenomen, or forename, resembling the verb numero, "I pay"; while Negidius has the form of a gentile name formed from the verb nego, "I refuse". Thus, Numerius Negidius is a personal name that can also be interpreted to mean "he who refuses to pay". For this reason, it was used to refer to the defendant in a hypothetical lawsuit.
Placeholder names are intentionally overly generic and ambiguous terms referring to things, places, or people, the names of which or of whom do not actually exist; are temporarily forgotten, or are unimportant; or in order to avoid stigmatization, or because they are unknowable or unpredictable given the context of their discussion; to de-emphasize in which event the precise specification thereof is otherwise impossible, or to deliberately expunge.
Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179 (1973), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States overturning the abortion law of Georgia. The Supreme Court's decision was released on January 22, 1973, the same day as the decision in the better-known case of Roe v. Wade.
A fictitious defendant is a person that cannot be identified by the plaintiff before a lawsuit is commenced. Commonly this person is identified as "John Doe" or "Jane Doe".
A legal case is in a general sense a dispute between opposing parties which may be resolved by a court, or by some equivalent legal process. A legal case is typically based on either civil or criminal law. In most legal cases, there are one or more accusers and one or more defendants. In some instances, a legal case may occur between parties that are not in opposition, but require a legal ruling to formally establish some legal facts.
Ejectment is a common law term for civil action to recover the possession of or title to land. It replaced the old real actions and the various possessory assizes where boundary disputes often featured. Though still used in some places, the term is now obsolete in many common law jurisdictions, in which possession and title are sued by the actions of eviction and quiet title, respectively.
A Doe subpoena is a subpoena that seeks the identity of an unknown defendant to a lawsuit. Most jurisdictions permit a plaintiff who does not yet know a defendant's identity to file suit against John Doe and then use the tools of the discovery process to seek the defendant's true name. A Doe subpoena is often served on an online service provider or ISP for the purpose of identifying the author of an anonymous post.
Doe v. 2themart.com Inc., 140 F. Supp. 2d 1088 (2001), was a federal case decided by United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, on the issue of an individual's First Amendment right to speak anonymously on the Internet and a private party's right to disclose the identity of the anonymous Internet user by enforcing a civil subpoena. The court held that 2TheMart.com (TMRT) failed to show that the identities of these anonymous Internet users were directly and materially relevant to the core defense in the litigation, and thus the subpoena should not be issued. Therefore, Doe's motion to quash the subpoena was granted.
Dendrite International, Inc. v. Doe No. 3, 342 N.J. Super. 134, 775 A.2d 756, is a New Jersey Superior Court case in which Dendrite International, Inc., a purveyor of computer software used in the pharmaceutical industry, brought a John Doe lawsuit against individuals who had anonymously posted criticisms of the company on a Yahoo message board. When Presiding Chancery Judge Kenneth MacKenzie rejected one of Dendrite's requests to compel Yahoo to reveal the identity of an anonymous defendant, Dendrite appealed. The appellate court upheld the district court's decision, and in doing so, created a set of guidelines for determining the circumstances under which an anonymous online speaker may be unmasked. This standard has since been applied to other cases, such as Mobilisa, Inc. v. Doe, Gallucci v. New Jersey On-Line LLC, Independent Newspapers v. Brodie, and The Mortgage Specialists, Inc. v. Implode-Explode Heavy Industries, Inc.
Krinsky v. Doe 6, was a decision by the California Court of Appeal, Sixth District, addressing the evidentiary standard required of plaintiffs seeking the identification of anonymous Internet posters. The case addressed defamation and the right to anonymous speech on the Internet. Plaintiff Lisa Krinsky sued Doe 6, an anonymous poster to Yahoo! message boards, for defamation. Krinsky served a subpoena to Yahoo! for Doe 6's identity. Doe 6 filed a motion to quash the subpoena, "contending that he had a First Amendment right to speak anonymously on the Internet."
Prenda Law, also known as Steele | Hansmeier PLLP and Anti-Piracy Law Group, was a Chicago-based law firm that ostensibly operated by undertaking litigation against copyright infringement. However, it was later characterized by the United States District Court for Central California in a May 2013 ruling as a "porno-trolling collective" whose business model "relie[d] on deception", and which resembled most closely a conspiracy and racketeering enterprise, referring in the judgment to RICO, the U.S. Federal anti-racketeering law. The firm ostensibly dissolved itself in July 2013 shortly after the adverse ruling although onlookers described Alpha Law Firm LLC as its apparent replacement. In 2014, the ABA Journal described the "Prenda Law saga" as having entered "legal folklore".
Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. Does 1–1,495, Civil Action No. 11-1741 (JDB/JMF), was a United States District Court for the District of Columbia case in which the court held that anonymous users of the peer-to-peer file sharing service BitTorrent could not remain anonymous after charges of copyright infringement were brought against them. The court ultimately dismissed the case, but the identities of defendants were publicly exposed.
Sherri Ann Jarvis was an American murder victim from Forest Lake, Minnesota whose body was discovered in Huntsville, Texas on November 1, 1980. Her body was discovered within hours of her sexual assault and murder, and remained unidentified for 41 years before investigators announced her identification via forensic genealogy in November 2021.
Unidentified decedent, or unidentified person, is a corpse of a person whose identity cannot be established by police and medical examiners. In many cases, it is several years before the identities of some UIDs are found, while in some cases, they are never identified. A UID may remain unidentified due to lack of evidence as well as absence of personal identification such as a driver's license. Where the remains have deteriorated or been mutilated to the point that the body is not easily recognized, a UID's face may be reconstructed to show what they had looked like before death. UIDs are often referred to by the placeholder names "John Doe" or "Jane Doe". In a database maintained by the Ontario Provincial Police, 371 unidentified decedents were found between 1964 and 2015.
Doe ex. rel. Tarlow v. District of Columbia, 489 F.3d 376, is a unanimous decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, written by Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh, in which the Court upheld a 2003 District of Columbia statute that stated the conditions for authorizing a non-emergency surgical procedure on a mentally incompetent person. This case developed out of an appeal to a district court decision that was brought on behalf of a mentally incompetent patient who was subjected to an abortion without her consent and another patient who was subjected to an eye surgery without the patient's consent. Under the appellate court's interpretation of the statute, a court located in the District of Columbia must apply the "best interest of the patient" standard to a person who was never competent, and the court must apply the "known wishes of the patient" standard to a person who was once competent. The appellate decision was remanded to the District Court.
The Presidential Memorandum on Military Service by Transgender Individuals, officially the Presidential Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security, is the 27th presidential memorandum signed by U.S. President Donald Trump on August 25, 2017. The intent was to prevent transgender people from serving in the U.S. military, on the basis that they would be a financial burden due to sex reassignment procedures and associated costs. Federal courts delayed the implementation of this rule by issuing four injunctions. On January 22, 2019, however, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration's ban to take effect.
Jane Doe v. Trump (1:17-cv-01597-CKK) was a lawsuit filed on August 9, 2017, and decided January 4, 2019 in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The suit sought to block Donald Trump and top Pentagon officials from implementing the proposed ban on military service for transgender people under the auspices of the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fifth Amendment. The court ruled that the Trump administration's policy should not be blocked. Nonetheless, the Trump administration's policy continued to be blocked due to three preliminary injunctions against it that were not part of this lawsuit and which remained in effect as of the lawsuit's conclusion on January 4, 2019.
Karnoski v. Trump (2:17-cv-01297-MJP) was a lawsuit filed on August 29, 2017 in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. The suit, like the similar suits Jane Doe v. Trump, Stone v. Trump, and Stockman v. Trump, sought to block Trump and top Pentagon officials from implementing the proposed ban on military service for transgender people under the auspices of the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fifth Amendment. The suit was filed on the behalf of three transgender plaintiffs, the Human Rights Campaign, and the Gender Justice League by Lambda Legal and OutServe-SLDN.