Short answer. Yes. Rule 3, Section 13 allows a plaintiff who is uncertain against whom he is entitled to relief to join any or all of them as defendants in the alternative — even though a right to relief against one may be inconsistent with a right of relief against the other.
What the law says
Where the plaintiff is uncertain against who of several persons he is entitled to relief, he may join any or all of them as defendants in the alternative, although a right to relief against one may be inconsistent with a right of relief against the other.
Rule 3, Section 13 — Alternative defendants. Read the full provision →
The rule exists for exactly your situation
The section reads: Where the plaintiff is uncertain against who of several persons he is entitled to relief, he may join any or all of them as defendants in the alternative, although a right to relief against one may be inconsistent with a right of relief against the other. The premise is honest uncertainty — you know you suffered a loss and you know it must be the doing of one of several persons, but the facts that would single out the responsible one are not in your hands. The Rules do not force you to guess at your peril; they let you bring everyone plausibly answerable into one case.
Why choosing wrongly would be worse
Without this rule, a plaintiff would have to pick one defendant, litigate to the end, and — if the proof showed the other was responsible — start over, with time having run against the second claim and with the first judgment potentially in the way. Alternative joinder collapses that gamble into a single proceeding, where the very evidence that clears one defendant tends to implicate the other. The dispute over which of them is answerable happens inside the case, in front of one court, instead of across successive lawsuits.
Inconsistency is expressly tolerated
The remarkable clause is the last one: joinder is proper although a right to relief against one may be inconsistent with a right of relief against the other. Suppose goods were damaged either while a carrier transported them or while a warehouse stored them — liability of one rests on facts that would exonerate the other. Pleaded ordinarily, those two claims would contradict each other. Pleaded in the alternative, the contradiction is precisely the point: you are saying that one of these two states of affairs is true, and asking the court to determine which. The section makes that a legitimate way to frame a complaint.
How to plead it well
Alternative joinder licenses uncertainty between defendants, not carelessness about facts: state truthfully what you know, and frame in the alternative only what you genuinely cannot yet determine. Expect each defendant to point at the other — that dynamic often does the plaintiff's work — and gather the records that trace your loss through each one's hands, since the case will turn on where the responsibility localises. A lawyer can help decide whom to include, because any or all of them is your choice to make, and leaving a plausible candidate out is the one version of the original gamble the rule cannot cure.