Smith v. Duffey’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 federal appellate · 3 district ·

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In our initial thinking about the case, however, we were reluctant to endorse the district court’s citation of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 , 127 S.Ct. 1955 , 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007), fast becoming the citation du jour in Rule 12(b)(6) cases, as authority for the dismissal of this suit. The Court held that in complex litigation (the case itself was an antitrust suit) the defendant is not to be put to the cost of pretrial discovery-a cost that in complex litigation can be so steep as to coerce a settlement on terms favorable to the plaintiff even when his claim is very weak-unless the complaint says enough about the case to permit an inference that it may well have real merit. The present case, however, is not complex. Were this suit to survive dismissal and proceed to the summary judgment stage, it would be unlikely to place on the defendants a heavy burden of compliance with demands for pretrial discovery .... But Bell Atlantic was extended, a week after we heard oral argument in the present case, in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, — U.S. -, 129 S.Ct. 1937 , 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009)-over the dissent of Justice Souter, the author of the majority opinion in Bell Atlantic-to all cases, even a case (Iqbal itself) in which the court of appeals had “promise[d] petitioners minimally intrusive discovery.” Id. at 1954 . Yet Iqbal is special in its own way, because the defendants had pleaded a defense of official immunity and the Court said that the pro”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Boroff v. Alza Corp.

2. “Statistical Information on Motions to Dismiss re Twombly/Iq-bal”; Dec 2009) and "Caselaw Study on Post-Iqbal Cases (Rev. 1/12/10)” both available at http://www.uscourts.gov/rules (as last viewed on Jan. 12, 2010 at 1:15 pm). . Both RCFC 12 and RCFC 8, which will be discussed in greater detail below, are virtually identical to their federal rules counterparts. . Notably, Iqbal was decided over the dissent of Justice Souter, the author of the majority opinion in Twombly , who characterized the 5-4 majority opinion as "bespeak|mg] a fundamental misunderstanding of the enquiry that Twombly demands.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 91 Fed. Cl. 412 - Dobyns v. United States