Seyfarth Synopsis: The Supreme Court’s Spokeo decision is sure to impact ERISA litigation. Expect ERISA plaintiffs to focus more on alleging a “concrete” injury, and ERISA defendants to argue more often that the claim cannot...more
Shortly after the Supreme Court’s decisions in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541 (2011) and AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 321 (2011), I appeared before a federal district judge on a motion to dismiss...more
Winds of change are blowing through Europe’s national courts, beginning with a new antitrust damages Directive requiring changes in national laws to facilitate private enforcement of competition law. This step was a major...more
In 2007, the United States Supreme Court in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007), significantly modified the standard of review applied to motions to dismiss in federal courts. A few years later, in 2009,...more
A Second Circuit panel recently revived a former employee’s racial discrimination suit against New York City, reversing in part the Southern District of New York’s dismissal of her case. In Littlejohn v. City of New York,...more
In an order issued in late April of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, adopted changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that were approved in September by the Judicial Conference of the United States....more
Rejecting the "punctiliously stated 'theory of pleading'" applied by the district court and the Fifth Circuit, the U.S. Supreme Court in Johnson v. City of Shelby, Mississippi, ___ S.Ct. ___, 2014 WL 5798626 (2014), held that...more
In Data Key Partners v. Permira Advisers LLC, 2014 WI 86, the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted the “plausibility” pleading standard articulated by the United States Supreme Court in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544...more
Declaratory judgment plaintiffs and counterclaimants in patent cases have long been accustomed to filing boilerplate claims that either do not identify an accused technology, or that do so in a cursory manner. Noninfringement...more