Interesting Judicial Comments: Little green men

30 Days of Debt Collection Will Be Back Soon... here's an interlude from that.

Federal courts, and probably all state courts, have a rule that allows a defendant to ask a Court to dismiss a case if that case "fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted." Such a motion (called a "12(b)(6)" motion in federal courts, because that's the number of the rule) works like this:

1. It assumes that everything in the Complaint is true, and
2. It asks the Court to rule that even if everything the plaintiff says is true, then the Plaintiff still cannot win for one reason or another.

So a judge has to assume, in ruling on a 12(b)(6) motion, that everything the Complaint says is true...

... or does she? Consider this quote from no less an authority than Justice David Souter, writing for the U.S. Supreme Court in Ashcroft v. Iqbal:

Rule 12(b)(6) does not countenance... dismissals based on a judge's disbelief of a complaint's factual allegations. The sole exception to this rule lies with allegations that are sufficiently fantastic to defy reality as we know it: claims about little green men, or the plaintiff's recent trip to Pluto, or experiences in time travel.

So, tough luck, claimants in that class action suit against alien abductors.





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