Legal News

Sick of Iqbal: Plaintiffs? Bar Pushing Back on Big Ruling

By Ashby Jones

Plaintiffs’ groups are fighting back against the Supreme Court’s Iqbal decision from last spring. They’ve begun taking their pleas to Congress and the rulemaking process for the federal courts. Click here for the National Law Journal story.

For now, some background: The Supreme Court’s ruling last spring in Iqbal v. Ashcroft had big national-security implications: The Court ruled 5-4 that a Pakistani Muslim who was arrested after the Sept. 11 attacks was barred from suing John Ashcroft, the former attorney general or Robert S. Mueller III, the current FBI director, for abuses he says he suffered in a Brooklyn detention center.

But the reach of the decision went beyond a detainee’s right to sue. In the opinion, the court clarified a key component of civil procedure, ruling that plaintiffs must include in their initial pleadings substantial, not “threadbare,” factual assertions that give “facial plausibility” to their claims. The pronouncement represented a major shift from the earlier rule, which required only a simple statement of the case against the defendant.

As we wrote a couple times after the ruling (here and here), defense lawyers of all stripes took note of the Iqbal language, and started using it to challenge plaintiffs’ lawsuits at the pleading stage.

And, according to the NLJ’s Tony Mauro, it’s had a real impact. Writes Mauro:

A major lawsuit against the makers of Seroquel, an anti-psychotic drug, was dismissed on Iqbal grounds in the Middle District of Florida in July. Last month, a California federal judge, citing Iqbal, dismissed a case challenging the government’s no-fly list, brought by a Muslim woman who claimed she was a victim of profiling. In a case at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, also last month, an Alien Tort Claims Act suit against Coca-Cola bottlers in Colombia was dismissed on Iqbal grounds.

“I have spent my whole life with the federal rules, and this is one of the biggest deals I have ever seen,” said New York University School of Law professor Arthur Miller (pictured), a longtime expert on civil procedure. “Me, old fogy troglodyte that I am, I see serious problems with democratic values here, with access to the courts, with resolution of disputes with a jury of peers.”

But now, groups that find themselves largely on the plaintiff side are fighting back. The groups met last week in Washington, D.C., to lay plans for a two-pronged battle to undo the ruling. 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.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 21, 2009 (boomark / email).