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The Myth of Notice Pleading

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The Myth of Notice Pleading THE MYTH OF NOTICE PLEADING Christopher M. Fairman* I. INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................988 II. ORIGINS OF THE MYTH ..................................................................................990 A. Foundation of the Federal Rules............................................................990 B. Supreme Court Support .........................................................................994 III. PLEADING REALITIES: A MACRO-MODEL OF MODERN PLEADING................998 A. Overview ...............................................................................................998 B. Elements Explored.................................................................................999 1. Conclusory Allegations ..................................................................999 2. Simplified Notice Pleading...........................................................1000 3. Targeted Heightened Pleading......................................................1002 4. Rule 9(b) Heightened Pleading.....................................................1004 5. Hyperpleading ..............................................................................1007 6. Prolixity........................................................................................1009 IV. MICRO-ANALYSIS OF PLEADING PRACTICE.................................................1011 A. Antitrust...............................................................................................1011 B. CERCLA .............................................................................................1021 C. Civil Rights..........................................................................................1027 D. Conspiracy...........................................................................................1032 E. Copyright.............................................................................................1036 F. Defamation ..........................................................................................1042 G. Negligence...........................................................................................1047 H. RICO ...................................................................................................1051 V. THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN MYTH AND MODEL ........................................1059 A. Judicial Perceptions and Docket Realities ...........................................1059 B. Pleading Cross-Pollination ..................................................................1061 C. Supreme Court (Mis)Guidance............................................................1062 VI. CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................1064 * Assistant Professor of Law, Michael E. Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University. The Author is grateful to his colleagues at Moritz for their support, especially Arthur Greenbaum and Marc Spindelman for their detailed comments on earlier drafts. The Author must also thank his cadre of research assistants—Edward Chyun (‘03), Brandon Teeples (‘03), Michael Beaver (‘04), Jonathan Wilcox (‘04), and Christopher Stevenson (‘05). Without their help this project would not have been possible. 988 ARIZONA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 45:987 I. INTRODUCTION Pleading is the gateway to the federal courts. By design, this threshold is easy to pass. Under the Federal Rules, “notice pleading” applies. This merely requires a plaintiff to provide a short and plain statement of a claim sufficient to put the defendant on notice.1 While there are exceptions under the Rules requiring pleading with greater factual detail, these heightened pleading situations are narrow.2 If any rule in federal civil procedure deserves the label “blackletter,” it is notice pleading. Indeed, thrice the Supreme Court has explicitly stated: notice pleading controls.3 Notwithstanding its foundation in the Federal Rules and repeated Supreme Court imprimatur, notice pleading is a myth. From antitrust to environmental litigation, conspiracy to copyright, substance specific areas of law are riddled with requirements of particularized fact-based pleading. To be sure, federal courts recite the mantra of notice pleading with amazing regularity.4 However, their rhetoric does not match the reality of federal pleading practice. Sometimes subtle, other times overt, federal courts in every circuit impose non- Rule-based heightened pleading in direct contravention of notice pleading doctrine. Despite the regularity with which courts require it, little scholarship exists exploring the divergent requirements contained in the concept—heightened pleading.5 Outside of the civil rights6 and securities fraud contexts,7 the literature 1. FED. R. CIV. P. 8(a). 2. See FED. R. CIV. P. 9(b) (requiring the circumstances constituting fraud and mistake be stated with particularity). 3. See Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 47–48 (1957); Leatherman v. Tarrant County Narcotics Intelligence & Coordination Unit, 507 U.S. 163, 168 (1993); Swierkiewicz v. Sorema, N.A., 534 U.S. 506, 514 (2002). 4. As of May 27, 2003, a Westlaw query of “notice pleading” in the Allfeds database yielded 5312 cases invoking the phrase. The phrase was used in 60 cases in the decade of the 1960s, 290 cases in the 1970s, 984 cases in the 1980s, and 2621 cases in the 1990s. So far this decade, “notice pleading” has been recited by the federal courts in 1278 cases. 5. Professor Richard Marcus is the exception having twice surveyed pleading practice and commented on the return to fact-based pleading. See generally Richard L. Marcus, The Revival of Fact Pleading Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 86 COLUM. L. REV. 433 (1986) [hereinafter Revival]; Richard L. Marcus, The Puzzling Persistence of Pleading Practice, 76 TEX. L. REV. 1749 (1998) [hereinafter Puzzling]. 6. Scholarly attention to heightened pleading in the civil rights context is more robust and universally critical. See generally Christopher M. Fairman, Heightened Pleading, 81 TEX. L. REV. 551 (2002); Douglas A. Blaze, Presumed Frivolous: Application of Stringent Pleading Requirements in Civil Rights Litigation, 31 WM. & MARY L. REV. 935 (1990); Carl Tobias, Public Law Litigation and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 74 CORNELL L. REV. 270, 299 (1989); C. Keith Wingate, A Special Pleading Rule for Civil Rights Complaints: A Step Forward or a Step Back, 49 MO. L. REV. 677 (1984). 7. This Article focuses solely on judicially-imposed heightened pleading requirements. Congress has also recently seized upon heightened pleading and imposed it with the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA) and the Y2K Act. See 2003] MYTH OF NOTICE PLEADING 989 largely ignores what courts and litigants must grapple to answer: what does heightened pleading require? By analyzing pleading practice across diverse substantive areas, this Article uncovers a rich continuum of heightened pleading requirements. Some are narrowly targeted requiring only a single element of a substantive claim to be pleaded with specificity. Others are more broad-based mirroring the Federal Rules’ particularity standard for fraud. Still others impose a form of “hyperpleading”—mandating virtually very element of a claim be pleaded with factual detail. This varied landscape of heightened pleading cuts across both substantive areas and jurisdictions.8 When the pleading practices in these micro substantive areas are combined, a macro vision of pleading emerges. Contrary to the myth, current practice is not a simple binary choice: fact-based pleading for fraud; notice pleading for everything else. Rather, there is a wide range of factual detail required in federal complaints. The spectrum begins with the factless and universally rejected “conclusory allegation.” Simplified notice pleading follows. The varieties of heightened pleading are next with their increasing particularity requirements. Ultimately, a pleading may reach the point of prolixity and the same fate as its conclusory cousin. Hence, the macro-model can be visualized as a pleading circle where substantial variety in factual particularity both exists and is required.9 This reality is a far cry from notice pleading. Part II of the Article briefly explores the origins of the notice pleading myth from the drafters’ vision through the Court’s pronouncements. Part III presents the macro-pleading model forged from the reality of pleading practice in the micro areas. The specific pleading practices of the micro substantive areas are detailed in Part IV. Part V then explores possible explanations for this disconnect between notice pleading rhetoric and reality. One overriding conclusion emerges— notice pleading as a universal standard is a myth. PSLRA, Pub. L. No. 104-67, 109 Stat. 737 (1995) (codified as amended in scattered sections of 15 U.S.C.); 15 U.S.C. §§ 6601–6617 (2001) (Y2K Act). Statutory heightened pleading under the PSLRA has generated considerable scholarly interest. See generally Joseph A. Grundfest & A.C. Pritchard, Statutes with Multiple Personality Disorders: The Value of Ambiguity in Statutory Design and Interpretation, 54 STAN. L. REV. 627 (2002); Marilyn F. Johnson et al., In re Silicon Graphics Inc.: Shareholder Wealth Effects Resulting From the Interpretation of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act’s Pleading Standard, 73 S. CAL. L. REV. 773 (2000); Ann M. Olazabal, The Search for “Middle Ground”: Towards a Harmonized Interpretation of the Private Securities
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