reception

The Florida Constitution, Article I, Section 16, secures the right of trial by jury to all and provides that in all criminal prosecutions the jury shall consist of twelve men, except in prosecutions for crimes punishable by imprisonment for not more than six months, in which case the jury shall consist of six men. Petitioner Williams faced charges of robbery, a felony carrying a potential sentence of life imprisonment. Williams filed a timely motion requesting a jury of twelve persons, which the trial court denied in accordance with state law. The case proceeded to trial before a jury composed of six members. Following the presentation of evidence, the six-person jury returned a verdict of guilty, and the court imposed a sentence of life imprisonment. Williams appealed his conviction to the Florida District Court of Appeal. The appellate court rejected his constitutional claim and affirmed the judgment. The United States Supreme Court thereafter granted a writ of certiorari, restricting its inquiry to the issues of jury size and the necessity of a unanimous verdict in state criminal prosecutions for serious offenses.

A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corporation and Schechter Live Poultry Market, along with individual operators Joseph, Martin, Alex, and Aaron Schechter, operated wholesale poultry slaughterhouse markets in Brooklyn, New York City. They purchased live poultry from commission men at the West Washington Market in New York City or at railroad terminals serving the city, where ninety-six percent of the poultry had arrived by rail from other states. The poultry was trucked to the defendants' slaughterhouses, slaughtered by schochtim employees within twenty-four hours, and sold to local retail dealers and butchers who sold directly to consumers in New York City and surrounding counties. The Live Poultry Code was proposed by the New York Live Poultry Chamber of Commerce and approved by President Roosevelt on April 13, 1934, under section 3 of the National Industrial Recovery Act. The Code set rules for the live poultry industry in the New York metropolitan area covering maximum work hours of forty per week, minimum wages of fifty cents per hour, a minimum number of employees graduated by sales volume, straight killing requirements that prohibited customer selection of individual birds from coops, sales only to licensed dealers, verified weekly price and volume reports, and maintenance of complete books and records. An indictment in the District Court for the Eastern District of New York charged the defendants with one count of conspiracy and twenty-nine counts of Code violations, including sales below minimum prices, sales to unlicensed dealers, failure to file accurate daily reports, sales of unfit poultry, permitting customer selections from coops, failure to employ the required number of workers, failure to pay minimum wages or overtime, and failure to pay the code fee. The defendants demurred on constitutional grounds, pleaded not guilty after the demurrer was overruled, and moved to dismiss at trial; the government introduced evidence of violations while the defendants presented none. The jury convicted on all counts. The Circuit Court of Appeals sustained the conviction on the conspiracy count and on sixteen counts for violation of the Code, but reversed the conviction on two counts which charged violation of requirements as to minimum wages and maximum hours of labor. The Supreme Court granted writs of certiorari on April 15, 1935, in both the defendants' appeal (No. 854) and the government's cross-appeal (No. 864), and heard the cases together on May 2 and 3, 1935.

In 1984 the divestiture of AT&T's local telephone business created seven regional service monopolies known as Regional Bell Operating Companies or Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers. More than a decade later Congress enacted the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which restructured local telephone markets and imposed duties on the ILECs to facilitate entry by competitive local exchange carriers through resale of services at wholesale rates, leasing of unbundled network elements, or interconnection of facilities. William Twombly and Lawrence Marcus filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of a putative class of all subscribers of local telephone and high-speed internet services from February 8, 1996 to the present. They named as defendants four consolidated ILECs: BellSouth Corporation, Qwest Communications International Inc., SBC Communications Inc., and Verizon Communications Inc. The complaint alleged that these ILECs conspired to restrain trade by engaging in parallel conduct to inhibit CLECs, including unfair agreements for network access, inferior connections, overcharging, and billing practices designed to sabotage CLEC customer relations. The complaint further alleged that the ILECs agreed not to compete against one another in their respective territories. This agreement was inferred from their common failure to pursue business opportunities in contiguous markets and from a statement by Qwest CEO Richard Notebaert that competing in another ILEC's territory might be a good way to turn a quick dollar but that does not make it right. The complaint asserted that in light of the absence of meaningful competition among the ILECs and their parallel course of conduct the defendants had entered into a contract combination or conspiracy to prevent competitive entry and to allocate customers and markets. The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim. It concluded that the alleged parallel behavior was fully explained by each ILEC's independent interest in defending its own territory and that the complaint did not allege facts suggesting the decision to refrain from competing elsewhere was contrary to the ILECs' apparent economic interests. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed, holding that plus factors need not be pleaded and that allegations of parallel conduct suffice if they leave open the possibility of collusion. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to address the proper standard for pleading an antitrust conspiracy through allegations of parallel conduct.