Renfro v. Unisys Corp.
As part of Public Justice’s Iqbal Project, we filed an amicus brief in this appeal of a district court decision misapplying the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal. The district court dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims against Unisys because it found the claims implausible under Iqbal. We argued that in reaching that conclusion, the district court made a series of significant analytical errors: (1) it disbelieved some of the plaintiffs’ factual allegations, and it ignored other allegations altogether; (2) it relied on its “judicial experience and common sense” to make speculative assumptions about the mutual-fund and labor markets that are demonstrably incorrect, as the plaintiffs would have proven with expert testimony; and (3) it ignored the context of the plaintiffs’ ERISA claims. We also argued that courts should take care in applying Iqbal, as overbroad applications of Iqbal shut the courthouse doors against injured plaintiffs at the earliest stage of a case.
Public Justice’s Claire Prestel, Melanie Hirsch, and Matt Wessler authored the brief, with input from Prof. Alex Reinert of Cardozo Law School.
