Brian Willis: July 2009 Archives

In today's New York Times, Adam Liptak discusses a quick but quiet revolution in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that may apply to the identically worded Florida Rule 1.110(b):

"For more than half a century, it has been clear that all a plaintiff had to do to start a lawsuit was to file what the rules call “a short and plain statement of the claim” in a document called a complaint. Having filed such a bare-bones complaint, plaintiffs were entitled to force defendants to open their files and submit to questioning under oath."

But, in Federal Court, no more.  In the case of Ashcroft v. Iqbal (U.S. 2008), the Supreme Court interpreted Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8, which states that “a pleading must contain a ‘short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief,’” to set forth the following test:

“[A] complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’”

The Court went on to explain how its new interpretation deviates from past case law:

“First, the tenet that a court must accept as true all of the allegations contained in a complaint is inapplicable to legal conclusions. Threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements, do not suffice. . .  Rule 8 marks a notable and generous departure from the hyper-technical, code-pleading regime of a prior era, but it does not unlock the doors of discovery for a plaintiff armed with nothing more than conclusions. Second, only a complaint that states a plausible claim for relief survives a motion to dismiss.  Determining whether a complaint states a plausible claim for relief will, as the Court of Appeals observed, be a context-specific task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial experience and common sense.

. . .

In keeping with these principles a court considering a motion to dismiss can choose to begin by identifying pleadings that, because they are no more than conclusions, are not entitled to the assumption of truth.”

Federal Rule 8(a) is virtually identical to Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.110(b), but Florida Courts still apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s old test.  I am not aware of any opinions from the Florida Courts confronting the Iqbal decision, but I predict such a decision is coming.