Retired federal judge Nancy Gertner and class action lawyer Reuben Guttman discuss the impact of Twombly and Iqbal, two SCOTUS decisions that precipitated critical changes in pleading, class certification, and expert standards that have affected a complaint’s capacity for making it past the motion-to-dismiss stage. In this wide-ranging interview, they talk about the challenges these decisions have on both judges and practitioners and how the landmark case of Brown v. Board might fare under post-Twiqbal standards.
Topics
4:02 Twombly/Iqbal’s impact on pleading standards
7:17 Why process and procedure matter
10:16 Changes pleading standards
12:43 Changes in class certifications
14:11 Rise of multidistrict litigation
16:20 Changes in expert standards, both criminal and civil
21:47 Experts in the civil rights arena
25:40 Applying today’s pleading and class certification standards to Brown v. Board
29:30 Rules that affect access to justice
33:04 The benefit of a losing Supreme Court case
36:04 Getting around these obstacles
44:11 Judges, lawyers, and the legacy of discrimination cases
48:35 Signoff question
Quote
“I know from having been a criminal defense lawyer and civil rights lawyer and a judge, and now sort of a litigator as well, that what I may find ‘plausible’ may be not what a jury finds ‘plausible.’ That plausibility is, in fact, a contextual analysis—in context. And when I sat on the bench there were numbers of times, in fact, that my law clerk would say to me, ‘Judge, you can get rid of this case. You can get rid of this case. The allegations are not plausible.’ And I would turn to the law clerk and say, ‘To whom? To you? To me? To some of my male colleagues on the bench?’ So essentially, plausibility enabled the judges, who are not the most diverse group in the world, to make their own decisions about whether a case should proceed.” Judge Nancy Gertner
Resources
Judge Nancy Gertner (bio)
Reuben Guttman (bio)
Representative Opinions of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (book)
From Conley to Twombly to Iqbal (article)
Brown v. Board of Education complaint (PDF)
Pretrial Advocacy (book)