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Material Facts In The Debate Over Twombly And Iqbal, Jonah B. Gelbach
Material Facts In The Debate Over Twombly And Iqbal, Jonah B. Gelbach
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This paper presents empirical evidence concerning the adjudication of defendant-filed summary judgment motions from nearly 2,000 randomly selected employment discrimination and contracts cases to try to assess Twombly and Iqbal’s performance in filtering cases according to merit. I first explain how such data might be helpful in such an assessment, taking into account the possibility that parties’ behavior might have changed following Twombly and Iqbal.
I then report results indicating that even using this large collection of data -- the most comprehensive data assembled to date to address this question -- we cannot tell whether “TwIqbal” …
The Law And Economics Of Proportionality In Discovery, Jonah B. Gelbach, Bruce H. Kobayashi
The Law And Economics Of Proportionality In Discovery, Jonah B. Gelbach, Bruce H. Kobayashi
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This paper analyzes the proportionality standard in discovery. Many believe the Advisory Committee's renewed emphasis on this standard has the potential to infuse litigation practice with considerably more attention to questions related to the costs and benefits of discovery. We discuss the history and rationale of proportionality's inclusion in Rule 26, adopting an analytical framework that focuses on how costs and benefits can diverge in litigation generally, and discovery in particular. Finally, we use this framework to understand the mechanics and challenges involved in deploying the six factors included in the proportionality standard. Throughout, we emphasize that the proportionality standard …