A second federal bill backed by the plaintiffs' bar aims to change a U.S. Supreme Court ruling -- currently a much-needed standard that will reduce federal court caseloads and could help weed out weak or frivolous lawsuits.
The Court's 5-4 ruling in Ashcroft v. Iqbal threw out a claim that former Attorney General John Ashcroft and current FBI Director Robert Mueller violated the Constitutional rights of a detainee caught up in the Bush Administration's post-9/11 roundup, according to this story from AmLaw Litigation Daily.
But, as reported on The Wall Street Journal Law Blog, the Court essentially established heightened pleading standards under Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which lays out the general rules for what the initial documents in a lawsuit -- the "pleadings" -- have to put forth.
"A wide range of cases have already been affected by Iqbal," noted a National Law Journal article.
The bill, H.R. 4115, would restore the pleading standards in federal cases to those prior to the Court's decision. A hearing on it will be held in the House Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy on December 16. It is the House version of Senator Arlen Specter's S. 1504, which was introduced in July.
J. Russell Jackson also has a take on the plaintiffs' bar "fix" on his Consumer Class Actions & Mass Torts blog.