Also known as: plausible claims for relief · plausibility standard
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A pleading standard under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 that a complaint must satisfy to survive a motion to dismiss. The standard requires enough nonconclusory factual matter to permit a reasonable inference that the defendant is liable, rather than allegations that are merely consistent with liability or that state only legal conclusions.
PixelSpark LLC sued ConnectNet Corp. alleging that the defendant and unnamed tech companies secretly agreed to block PixelSpark's app from app stores. The complaint cited only vague industry-wide coordination and roughly simultaneous policy changes across platforms. The court granted the motion to dismiss because the allegations described conduct equally consistent with independent decisions and failed to support a plausible inference of an actual agreement.
Lena sued RoadLink and SwiftHaul alleging they were joint employers who misclassified her as an independent contractor. Her complaint used phrases such as total control and complete dependence but supplied no facts about who set her schedule, determined her pay, or supervised her work. The court granted SwiftHaul's motion to dismiss because the bare labels did not permit a plausible inference that SwiftHaul was her joint employer.
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A complaint must include enough nonconclusory factual allegations that, taken as true, permit a reasonable inference of liability. Courts first disregard legal conclusions and threadbare recitals of elements, then decide whether the remaining facts cross the line from conceivable to plausible.
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No. Parallel conduct is consistent with independent, lawful decisions and does not by itself permit a plausible inference of an agreement. The complaint must supply additional factual matter that tends to exclude the possibility of lawful independent action.
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Courts disregard bare legal conclusions and threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action. Only well-pleaded factual allegations are accepted as true and considered when deciding whether the complaint states a plausible claim for relief.
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The court grants the defendant's motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6). The plaintiff may seek leave to amend, but the original complaint is insufficient to proceed to discovery.
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…merely parallel behavior explained in Theatre Enterprises , Monsanto , and Matsushita , and their main argument against the plausibility standard at the pleading stage is its ostensible conflict with an early statement construing Rule 8. Justice Black's opinion for the Court in Conley v. Gibson spoke not only of the need for fair…