http://www.prisonplanet.com/supreme-court-guts-american-system-of-justice.html
Washington's Blog <http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/07/supreme-court-decision-is-assault-on.html> Wednesday, July 22, 2009 The New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/us/21bar.html?_r=3&scp=2&sq=9/11&st=cse> is providing important coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court's May 18, 2009 decision in the case known as Ashcroft v. Iqbal: The lower courts have certainly understood the significance of the decision, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which makes it much easier for judges to dismiss civil lawsuits right after they are filed. They have cited it more than 500 times in just the last two months. "Iqbal is the most significant Supreme Court decision in a decade for day-to-day litigation in the federal courts," said Thomas C. Goldstein, an appellate lawyer with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington. Why is Iqbal such an important case? As the Times notes: 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. This approach, particularly when coupled with the American requirement that each side pay its own lawyers no matter who wins, gave plaintiffs settlement leverage. Just by filing a lawsuit, a plaintiff could subject a defendant to great cost and inconvenience in the pre-trial fact-finding process called discovery... Information about wrongdoing is often secret. Plaintiffs claiming they were the victims of employment discrimination, a defective product, an antitrust conspiracy or a policy of harsh treatment in detention may not know exactly who harmed them and how before filing suit. But plaintiffs can learn valuable information during discovery. The Iqbal decision now requires plaintiffs to come forward with concrete facts at the outset, and it instructs lower court judges to dismiss lawsuits that strike them as implausible. "Determining whether a complaint states a plausible claim for relief," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the five-justice majority, "requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial experience and common sense." More ... <http://www.prisonplanet.com/supreme-court-guts-american-system-of-justice.html> -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- Constitution Society 2900 W Anderson Ln C-200-322, Austin, TX 78757 512/299-5001 www.constitution.org [email protected] ------------------------------------------------------------------- [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
