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Iqbal, Twombly, And The Expected Cost Of False Positive Error, Mark Anderson

Articles

Iqbal and Twombly introduced a new standard for pleading federal claims by overruling five-decades old language from Conley v. Gibson. Instead of plaintiffs being entitled to discovery unless the complaint affirmatively forecloses the possibility of recovery, Iqbal and Twombly require a more searching evaluation of the complaint under an ambiguous "plausibility" standard. The policy behind this increased burden on plaintiffs is to prevent the false positive error that burdensome discovery creates. How the plausibility standard from Iqbal and Twombly should operate in the real world is poorly understood. There is general acknowledgement that no clear guidance exists about how to …