When the U.S. Supreme Court scrapped Conley v. Gibson’s “no set of facts” federal pleading standard in Twombly (2007) and Iqbal (2009), courts initially struggled to apply the inherently ambiguous “plausibility” standard. In the immediate aftermath, some courts frankly misconstrued Twombly and Iqbal to invite a Daubert-style “gate keeper” appraisal of complaints in which judges could (and should) prune claims that, based on their own personal experience with the subject matter at issue, appeared dubious. One potential source of this confusion is a single sentence in the Supreme Court’s Iqbal opinion: “Determining whether a complaint states a plausible claim for relief will … be a context-specific task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial experience and common sense.” While the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has largely rectified this misconception, courts occasionally toss daunting complex claims based on skepticism and a concern about costly and burdensome discovery rather than a correct application of the plausibility standard. A recent antitrust decision by U.S. District Judge Mark A. Kearney of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania provides a model framework for analyzing plausibility.
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