Twombly and Iqbal: How the Supreme Court Has Radically Redefined Access to the Federal Courts
| Publication year | 2012 |
| Pages | 12 |
| Citation | Vol. 25 No. 5 Pg. 12 |
Vol. 25, No. 5.12. Twombly and Iqbal: How the Supreme Court has Radically Redefined Access to the Federal Courts
Volume 25 No. 5
Sep/Oct 2012
In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the second of two decisions that have radically altered interpretation of the general pleading requirements of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Of great concern to counsel for both plaintiffs and defendants, as well as legal scholars, these decisions have had and continue to have tremendous effect in federal courts.
The Utah Bar Journal briefly addressed the Twombly case in a 2009 article, but the full import of the change in federal pleading standards has only recently been realized. See John H. Bogart, Living with Twombly, 22 Utah B.J. 23 (March/April 2009). This article explores the evolution of Rule 8 pleading requirements in federal court, the Rule 8 revolution hastened in by the Twombly and Iqbal line of cases, and the consequences and criticisms of the newly-required heightened pleading requirements over the last several years since their introduction.
The Evolution of Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires a pleading to include "a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief." Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). In 1957, the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted this requirement in Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41 (1957), and held that a complaint should not be dismissed under Rule 12(b)(6) unless it is "beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief." Id. at 45-46.
The Conley standard has governed federal civil suits for more than fifty years. Under Conley, plaintiffs have had the luxury of crafting general, simple pleadings and with predictability and reliability have overcome most Rule 12 motions.
Then, in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007), the U.S. Supreme Court abrogated Conley, saying that its "'no set of facts' language has been questioned, criticized, and explained away long enough." Id. at 562. The Court then introduced a new "plausibility" standard:
While a complaint attacked by a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss does not need detailed factual allegations, a plaintiff's obligation to provide the "grounds" of his "entitle[ment] to relief" requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of a cause of action's elements will not do. Factual allegations must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level on the assumption that all of the complaint's allegations are true....
Asking for plausible grounds...does not impose a probability requirement at the pleading stage; it simply calls for enough fact to raise a reasonable expectation that discovery will reveal evidence of illegal agreement....
Id. at 555-56 (footnotes and citations omitted). In other words, plaintiffs must "nudge[] their claims across the line from conceivable to plausible" in order to survive. Id. at 570. A Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss must therefore be granted unless the pleading reaches a level of "plausibility." Id. at 556The need at the pleading stage for allegations plausibly suggesting (not merely consistent with) agreement reflects the threshold requirement of Rule 8(a)(2) that the "plain statement" possess enough heft to "sho[w] that the pleader is entitled to relief."
Initial reactions to Twombly were mixed, perhaps partly due to the Supreme Court's express denial that it created a heightened pleading standard. See id. at 569 n.14 ("[W]e do not apply any 'heightened' pleading standard."). For example, Keith Bradley, writing in the Northwestern University Law Review, suggested that "'[p]lausibility' is an element of a certain kind of antitrust conspiracy claim, not a standard for pleadings in general." Keith Bradley, Pleading Standards Should Not Change After Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, 102 Nw. U.L. Rev. CoLLoqUy 117, 122 (2007).
Within two short years, Mr. Bradley was proven to be mistaken. In May 2009, the Supreme Court in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009), applied Twombly to all federal court pleading requirements.
In Iqbal, the Supreme Court noted that the lower court had relied on Conley's "no-set-of-facts" analysis, which had subsequently...
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