Also known as: frivolous claims · frivolous lawsuit · frivolous suit
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
An assertion of a right that lacks any reasonable basis in law or fact. Such a claim may be eliminated during pretrial management and may subject the filing attorney to professional discipline.
CloudNova sued Apex Logistics with dozens of overlapping contract, tort, and trade secret counts. At the initial pretrial conference the judge required the parties to collapse duplicative theories into a short list of core disputes. The judge eliminated several counts that rested on no plausible legal theory or factual predicate.
Plaintiffs alleged an antitrust conspiracy among telephone carriers based solely on parallel pricing behavior. The complaint contained no facts showing an actual agreement. The court dismissed the action because the allegations did not plausibly suggest the required conspiracy element.
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Appointed counsel declined to raise two arguments the defendant wanted pressed on appeal. Both arguments lacked support in the record and controlling precedent. The court held that counsel was not required to advance those non-meritorious points.
A public-figure plaintiff sued for defamation but offered no evidence that the defendant acted with actual malice. The defendant moved for summary judgment. The court granted the motion because the record contained no clear and convincing proof of the required mental state.
A plaintiff sued a federal agency directly under the Constitution seeking damages for alleged Fourth Amendment violations. No statute waived sovereign immunity and no precedent recognized such an implied remedy. The court dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction because the theory was wholly insubstantial.
An employee sued for breach of an implied covenant after being fired for reporting suspected criminal activity by coworkers. California law did not recognize such a tort claim on these facts. The court entered judgment for the employer because the asserted cause of action was not viable.
A lawyer must decline when the proposed claim lacks a nonfrivolous basis in law and fact. The rule requires some grounding in existing authority or a good-faith argument for extension of the law. Speculation about future conduct or generalized fears does not satisfy the standard.
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No. The nonfrivolous basis must exist at the time of filing. Filing in anticipation that discovery might later supply missing facts turns the suit into a prohibited fishing expedition.
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The rule lets the court formulate and simplify the issues early so that discovery, motion practice, and trial focus only on disputes that actually matter. Narrowing the case reduces cost and delay while discouraging wasteful pretrial activity.
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Yes, provided the argument rests on a colorable reading of current authority or analogous decisions. The rule expressly permits good-faith efforts to change or extend the law when some plausible hook exists in the existing legal landscape.
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…legal theory; when a plaintiff supplies facts to support his claim, courts do not conjure up unpleaded facts that might turn a frivolous claim into a substantial one. The point is that Conley 's "no set of facts" language should be understood in light of the opinion's preceding summary of the complaint's concrete allegations,…