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Saturday, September 19, 2009

Courts - "Plaintiffs Groups Mount Effort to Undo Supreme Court's 'Iqbal' Ruling"

Tony Mauro of The National Law Journal writes in a lengthy story dated Sept. 21st that begins:

On May 18, the U.S. Supreme Court gave corporate defendants a gift that keeps on giving: the Iqbal decision, which has made it easier than ever for defendants to shut down lawsuits before they get to the costly discovery stage.

Now, four months later, civil rights and consumer groups and trial lawyers are beginning to push back. They met on Sept. 14 in Washington, D.C., to lay plans for a two-pronged battle to undo what they see as a devastating blow to their lifeblood litigation. The campaign will be aimed at Congress as well as the rulemaking process for federal courts. Hearings are being planned for October in the House and the Senate.

"This ruling has threatened to upend the way we have been doing things for a very long time," said John Payton of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is part of the growing coalition. "The alarm is quite real."

In Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which built on the 2007 Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly decision, the Court said plaintiffs must include in their initial pleadings substantial, not "threadbare," factual assertions that give "facial plausibility" to their claims -- a major shift from the tradition of "notice pleading," which required only a simple statement of the case against the defendant.

With remarkable speed and success, "Iqbal motions" to dismiss because of insufficient pleadings have become commonplace in federal courts, already producing more than 1,500 district court and 100 appellate court decisions according to a Westlaw search. Many more are pending.

Here is a list of ILB Iqbal entries.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 19, 2009 10:24 AM
Posted to Courts in general