Section 22 Pleadings Standards

• Library: Merchandising Practices Act 2013

How to plead MPA violations is a difficult issue, not only because of differences between common-law fraud and the MPA’s so-called “statutory” fraud, but also because of differences in state and federal statutes and court decisions. In this sense, while Missouri is a fact-pleading state, federal jurisdictions require only notice. ITT Commercial Fin. Corp. v. Mid-Am. Marine Supply Corp., 854 S.W.2d 371, 379
(Mo. banc 1993); Rule 55.05; Fed. R. Civ. P. 8. In both federal and state courts, common-law fraud requires additional particularity. Fed. R. Civ. P. 9; Rule 55.15. Some federal courts have required additional particularity in consumer fraud, see §4 of Chapter 2 of this guidebook, although, generally, state courts do not require that degree of specificity. It is also worthy of note that, on occasion, courts seem to confuse the common-law tort of fraud with statutory consumer fraud.

For a state case, fact pleading identifies, narrows, and defines the issues such that the trial court and the parties know:

what issues are to be tried; what discovery is necessary; and what evidence may be admitted at trial.

State ex...