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Civil Procedure Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Civil Procedure

Defense Against The Dark Arts Of Copyright Trolling, Matthew Sag, Jake Haskell Jan 2018

Defense Against The Dark Arts Of Copyright Trolling, Matthew Sag, Jake Haskell

Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this Article, we offer both a legal and a pragmatic framework for defending against copyright trolls. Lawsuits alleging online copyright infringement by John Doe defendants have accounted for roughly half of all copyright cases filed in the United States over the past three years. In the typical case, the plaintiff's claims of infringement rely on a poorly substantiated form pleading and are targeted indiscriminately at noninfringers as well as infringers. This practice is a subset of the broader problem of opportunistic litigation, but it persists due to certain unique features of copyright law and the technical complexity of Internet …


The Importance Of Being Dismissive: The Efficiency Role Of Pleading Stage Evaluation Of Shareholder Litigation, Lawrence A. Hamermesh, Michael L. Wachter Aug 2015

The Importance Of Being Dismissive: The Efficiency Role Of Pleading Stage Evaluation Of Shareholder Litigation, Lawrence A. Hamermesh, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

It has been claimed that the risk/reward dynamics of shareholder litigation have encouraged quick settlements with substantial attorneys’ fee awards but no payment to shareholders, regardless of the merits of the case. Fee-shifting charter and bylaw provisions may be too blunt a tool to control agency costs associated with excessive shareholder litigation, and are in any event now prohibited by Delaware statute. We claim, however, that active judicial supervision of public company shareholder litigation at an early stage reduces the costs of frivolous litigation to shareholders by separating meritorious from unmeritorious litigation before the full costs of discovery are incurred. …


Critical Race Empiricism: A New Means To Measure Civil Procedure, Victor D. Quintanilla Jan 2013

Critical Race Empiricism: A New Means To Measure Civil Procedure, Victor D. Quintanilla

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article reflects the second phase in a research line examining the effects of highly subjective pleading rules, specifically, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009), and was an invited contribution to a symposium, which explored the intersection of empirical legal methods and critical race theory. In this phase, I updated the empirical legal analysis in a prior article, Beyond Common Sense: A Social Psychological Study of Iqbal’s Effect on Claims of Race Discrimination, 17 Michigan Journal of Race and Law 1 (2011), in three ways. First, I lengthened the time horizon from 18 months to 24 months, increasing the …


Solving A Pleading Plague: Why Federal Courts Should Strike Insufficient Affirmative Defenses Under The Twombly-Iqbal Plausibility Standard, Nathan A. Leber Jan 2013

Solving A Pleading Plague: Why Federal Courts Should Strike Insufficient Affirmative Defenses Under The Twombly-Iqbal Plausibility Standard, Nathan A. Leber

Cleveland State Law Review

The plausibility standard is the remedy to the rampant pleading of meritless affirmative defenses in federal courts. Set forth in Bell Atlantic Corp v. Twombly, and later clarified in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the plausibility standard requires pleadings to contain sufficient factual allegations that give rise to a plausible claim for relief. In both Twombly and Iqbal, the Supreme Court used the plausibility approach to dismiss factually-deficient complaints. Applying the plausibility test to insufficient affirmative defenses produces the same result. The central proposition of this Note is that federal courts should analyze affirmative defenses under the Twombly-Iqbal plausibility standard. In order …


The Post-Iqbal State Of Pleading: An Argument Opposing A Uniform National Pleading Regime, Mark W. Payne Jul 2012

The Post-Iqbal State Of Pleading: An Argument Opposing A Uniform National Pleading Regime, Mark W. Payne

University of Miami Business Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court's 2009 decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal placed a squeeze on the once touted liberal Federal Rules of Civil Procedure by requiring judges to consider the veracity of potential plaintiffs' federal claims in light of Iqbal's new heightened pleading standard. This article examines post-Iqbal pleading standards across United States jurisdictions and argues that states should exert caution before choosing to adopt Iqbal's new "plausibility" standard, and if they elect to modify their pleading standards in light of the Iqbal decision, they should also carefully contemplate their method of adoption.


Pro Se Litigants: Application Of A Single Objective Standard Under Frcp 11 To Reduce Frivolous Litigation, Brian L. Holtzclaw Jan 1993

Pro Se Litigants: Application Of A Single Objective Standard Under Frcp 11 To Reduce Frivolous Litigation, Brian L. Holtzclaw

Seattle University Law Review

This Comment addresses the application of Rule 11 sanctions to pro se litigants and argues that based on the language of Rule 11, the concerns expressed in the Advisory Committee Note to Rule 11, and the primary goal of Rule 11 to deter abusive pleadings, a single objective standard should be applied to all parties-attorneys, represented parties, and pro se litigants-to determine whether Rule 11 has been violated. Under this single objective standard, a pro se litigant's lack of legal representation should be considered only in determining the severity of the sanction, not in determining whether Rule 11 has been …


A Distorted Mirror: The Supreme Court's Shimmering View Of Summary Judgment, Directed Verdict, And The Value Of Adjudication, Jeffrey W. Stempel Jan 1988

A Distorted Mirror: The Supreme Court's Shimmering View Of Summary Judgment, Directed Verdict, And The Value Of Adjudication, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

As almost anyone alive during the past decade knows, this is the era of the ‘litigation explosion,’ or there is at least the perception that a litigation explosion exists. Although all agree that the absolute number of lawsuits has increased in virtually every corner of the state and federal court systems, there exists vigorous debate about whether the increase is unusual in relative or historical terms and even more vigorous debate about whether the absolute increase in cases symbolizes the American concern for fairness and justice or represents a surge in frivolous or trivial disputes needlessly clogging the courts. As …