Yukio Ota

オオタ ユキオ

太田 幸夫

Surugadai University Academic Information Repository

Summary : The New Developments in AmericanPleading Standards著者名(英) Yukio Otajournal orpublication title比較法文化 : 駿河台大学比較法研究所紀要number 19page range 117-118year 2010URL http://doi.org/10.15004/00000450Creative Commons : 表示 - 非営利 - 改変禁止http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.ja117《Summary》 The New Developments in American Pleading StandardsYukio OtaIn Anglo-American civil procedure, parties exchange their briefs （pleadings） before trials. Pleading standards that require what should be written in the complaint have greatly changed historically. In 1938, the United States of America has adopted Federal Rules of Civil Pro-cedure that has changed common law pleading or code pleading to no-tice pleading. Rule 8 （a） （2） requires that claims for relief shall con-tain “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief”. The main aim of pleadings under this rule is to give the opponents and the court fair notice of what are the rough is-sues of the case. The role to exclude useless issues is left to pretrial conference or summary judgment that will be carried out later.However, the United States Supreme Court showed the new view in Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly （Twombly）, 550 U. S. 594 （2007） that the plaintiﬀ s who seek damages under the Sherman Act must show plau-sible grounds to infer an illegal act. Two Justices dissented to this holding. The same court reinforced this view in Ashcroft v. Iqbal （Iqbal）, 129 S.Ct. 1937 （2009） saying that the plaintiﬀ  seeking damages for dis-crimination against an Islamic after the 9.11 terrorist attack would need to allege more by way of factual content to nudge his claim of purposeful discrimination across the line from conceivable to plausible. 比較法文化 第19号（2011）118Four Justices disssented to this holding. The precedent named the leading case in the ﬁ eld of pleadings is Conley v. Gibson （Conley）, 355 U. S. 41 （1957）. It announced that a com-plaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it ap-pears beyond doubt that the plaintiﬀ  can prove no set of facts in sup-port of his claim which would entitle him to relief. Thereafter many cases followed Conley. But Twombly and Iqbal have weakend the value of Conley as a precedent. It is reported that the number of dismissed cases in the federal courts have been increasing after those decisions and some congressmen who thought those decisions unjust introduced bills to limit the scope of dismissal. The role of both decisions as prec-edents depends on the trend of case law and legislation hereafter.The Japanese judicial system has not adopted the jury system. Ac-cordingly, the plausibility of facts in the complaint is not necessarily asked in the stage of reviewing the complaints. But reviewing the rea-sonableness of allegations of both parties is important in order to avoid useless trials. In addition, if the allegation of one party looks un-plausible, I think it is posible not to take evidence. Twombly and Iqbal must have taken into consideration the enormous sum that is required to carry out discovery in mammoth cases or the necessity to avoid the obstruction to governmental activities by frivo-lous actions. It is necessary, also in Japan, to review fully the reason-ableness of allegations of both parties in the early stage and to ex-clude useless proofs. Those measures will bring fruitful and speedy trials and will make the court easily accessible to the people as a whole.

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