Short answer. Yes. Section 10 of Rule 3 lets you make that person a defendant instead, stating the reason in your complaint, when you cannot obtain the consent of someone who should be joined as a plaintiff. This keeps the case from stalling over a party's refusal to cooperate.
What the law says
If the consent of any party who should be joined as plaintiff can not be obtained, he may be made a defendant and the reason therefor shall be stated in the complaint.
Rule 3, Section 10 — Unwilling co. Read the full provision →
The problem this section solves
Some claims legally require the participation of more than one person as plaintiff — for instance, where several people jointly own the right being sued upon. Section 10 addresses what happens when one of those necessary co-plaintiffs refuses, or simply cannot be reached, to give consent to being named as a plaintiff. Without a mechanism to handle this, a single uncooperative co-owner could effectively block the whole claim from ever being filed.
The unwilling co-plaintiff becomes a defendant
Rather than letting that refusal halt the litigation, Section 10 permits the person to 'be made a defendant,' with the reason for doing so stated in the complaint. This preserves the substance of the claim — all the necessary parties are still before the court — while accommodating the practical reality that consent cannot be forced. The unwilling co-plaintiff's interest is still represented in the litigation, just from the defendant's side of the caption instead of the plaintiff's.
Why the stated reason matters
The requirement to state the reason in the complaint keeps this device transparent rather than something a plaintiff could quietly use to reshape a case. It puts the court and the other parties on notice of exactly why an ostensible co-owner or co-claimant is on the defendant side, so that the actual alignment of interests in the dispute remains clear even though the formal party designation does not match it.
What happens once they're a defendant
Once named a defendant under Section 10, the formerly unwilling co-plaintiff is treated procedurally like any other defendant in the case — they may file an answer, raise defenses, and otherwise participate to protect whatever interest they actually have in the subject matter, even though the complaint frames them as an adverse party rather than an ally of the plaintiff. Their real-world alignment of interest does not disappear just because their formal position in the caption has changed. If that person later changes their mind and wishes to align with the plaintiff's side after all, nothing in Section 10 forecloses them from doing so within the same case, since their formal position as a named defendant does not permanently fix where their actual interest in the litigation lies.