The Factual Plausibility Standard for Assessing the Sufficiency of a Complaint in the Twombley-iqbal Era
| Publication year | 2011 |
Fall 2011 #1. The Factual Plausibility Standard For Assessing The Sufficiency Of A Complaint In The Twombley-Iqbal Era
VOLUME 26 , NUMBER 4, Fall 2011
Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure(fn1) requires that a complaint set forth a "short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief." Despite the simplicity of the rule, the standards for assessing the Sufficiency of a complaint as defined by the Supreme Court have continued to evolve. In Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombley,(fn2) and in Ashcroft v. Iqbal,(fn3) the Unites States Supreme Court articulated a new factual plausibility standard that a complaint must satisfy to survive a motion to dismiss. Earlier this year, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court articulated a pleadings standard in Burns v. Architectural Doors and Windows(fn4) that approaches the factual plausibility standard now applicable in federal court. This article will familiarize attorneys with these decisions, as well as several recent decisions from the First Circuit Court of Appeals that have applied the factual plausibility standard in particular cases.
From Notice Pleading to Plausible Facts
Anyone who attended law school before 2007 learned the concept of notice pleading set forth in 1957 in Conley v. Gibson.(fn5) In Conley, the Supreme Court explained that the purpose of the complaint was to "give the defendant fair notice of what the claim is . . . and the grounds upon which it rests."(fn6) Conley held that a complaint should not be dismissed "unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief."(fn7) For the next 60 years, plaintiffs were largely given the benefit of the doubt; complaints would not be dismissed for failure to state a claim as long as the plaintiff provided sufficient information in the complaint to give the defendant notice of the theory of liability.
The Supreme Court reopened the issue of the need for factual development in a complaint in the recent cases of Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombley(fn8) and Ashcroft v. Iqbal.(fn9) In these decisions, plausibility supplants notice as the test for Sufficiency of a complaint. To survive a motion to dismiss, "a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to 'state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'"(fn10) "A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged."(fn11) Conclusory allegations are no longer sufficient, and the reviewing court is not required to assume that conclusions are true.(fn12)
The new plausibility requirement is perhaps the result of the two unusual cases that were before the Supreme Court. Twombley involved an antitrust class action in which local telephone and Internet users alleged that the so-called Baby Bell phone companies had engaged in a conspiracy to restrain trade.(fn13) The essential factual allegation in the complaint was that the Baby Bells had engaged in "parallel conduct" within their respective territories to prevent new service providers from entering the market.(fn14) The difficulty the Court had with this allegation was that parallel conduct was not necessarily unlawful under the antitrust laws. The Court observed: "The inadequacy of showing parallel conduct or interdependence, without more, mirrors the ambiguity of the behavior: consistent with conspiracy, but just as much in line with a wide swath of rational and competitive business strategy unilaterally prompted by common perceptions of the market."(fn15) Consistent with its holding that "stating a claim requires a complaint with enough factual matter (taken as true) to suggest that an agreement was made," the Court determined that "an allegation of parallel conduct and a bare assertion of conspiracy will not suffice."(fn16)
Any notion that Twombley might be limited to antitrust cases was belied by the Supreme Court's decision in Iqbal. Iqbal, a Pakistani Muslim, was arrested in the United States on criminal charges following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He maintained in his complaint that he had been deprived of a variety of constitutional rights...
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