Iqbal and Twombly transform federal litigation
Courts are unevenly applying two infamous Supreme Court decisions
April 29, 2012 at 08:00 PM
14 minute read
In a now infamous pair of decisions, Bell Atlantic v. Twombly in 2007 and Ashcroft v. Iqbal in 2009, the Supreme Court announced a new pleading standard that shook the foundations of federal litigation. The decisions allow district court judges to dismiss a complaint if it does not set out a “plausible” claim—a departure from the rule established in the 1957 case Conley v. Gibson that a court cannot dismiss a complaint unless it is apparent that the plaintiff could prove “no set of facts” that would entitle him to relief.
The defense bar heralded the decisions as a path to early dismissal of frivolous cases. Meanwhile, plaintiffs decried Iqbal as a barrier to legitimate claims. But according to a recent study by the Federal Judicial Center (FJC), neither prediction has come true.
The FJC studied data from 23 federal district courts and found that although defendants are filing more motions to dismiss—a 2.2 percent increase over pre-Twombly levels—those motions aren't resulting in more cases being dismissed with prejudice. Rather, courts are giving plaintiffs a chance to replead. A study published by the Washington College of Law at American University showed that the percentage of motions to dismiss that were granted with leave to amend “increased from 6 percent under Conley to 9 percent under Twombly to 19 percent under Iqbal.”
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