Consumer Law

Congressional Hearing on Legislation to Overrule Iqbal and Twombly

By Brian Wolfman

We blogged here last July about legislation introduced by Senator Specter to overrule the Supreme Court's decisions in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which heightened pleading requirements for plaintiffs. Civil rights and consumer organizations, among others, have argued that the decisions are unfairly keeping plaintiffs out of court.

Today, there was a Senate hearing on the legislation. This Legal Times blog entry explains that some Senators, including newby Al Franken, gave lawyer Greg Garre a hard time for maintaining that there was not enough evidence to show that Iqbal and Twombly were unfairly hurting plaintiffs. Garre won the Iqbal case when he was in the Solicitor General's office.  (He's now in private practice.)

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on December 02, 2009 (boomark / email).