McKennon Law Group, Author at McKennon Law Group

Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. ___, 129 S. Ct. 1937 (2009), the 5-month-old U.S. Supreme Court decision that has made federal pleadings standards much more stringent, will get a Capitol Hill airing on Tuesday October 27, 2009. The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold the first congressional hearing on the far-reaching May ruling, which raised the pleading standard for most civil complaints, making it more difficult to keep cases from being dismissed.

Iqbal was a 5 to 4 decision delivered on May 18, 2009 by Justice Kennedy held that Iqbal’s complaint failed to plead sufficient facts to state a claim for purposeful and unlawful discrimination.

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2), a complaint must contain a “short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” “[D]etailed factual allegations” are not required (Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007)), but the Rule does call for sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to “state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face,” Id. at 570. A claim has facial plausibility when the pleaded factual content allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged. Id. at 556.

The Court held that Iqbal’s pleadings did not comply with Rule 8 under Twombly. The Court found that several of his allegations – that petitioners agreed to subject him to harsh conditions as a matter of policy, solely on account of discriminatory factors and for no legitimate penological interest, that Ashcroft was that policy’s “principal architect”, and that Mueller was “instrumental” in its adoption and execution, were conclusory and not entitled to be assumed true. The Court decided that given that the September 11 attacks were perpetrated by Arab Muslims, it was not surprising that a legitimate policy directing law enforcement to arrest and detain individuals because of their suspected link to the attacks would produce a disparate, incidental impact on Arab Muslims, even though the policy’s purpose was to target neither Arabs nor Muslims. Even if the complaint’s well-pleaded facts gave rise to a plausible inference that Iqbal’s arrest was the result of unconstitutional discrimination, that inference alone did not entitle him to relief since his claims rested solely on their ostensible policy of holding detainees categorized as “of high interest,” but the complaint does not contain facts plausibly showing that their policy was based on discriminatory factors.

The Court rejected Iqbal’s arguments. First, the Court found that Iqbal’s claim that Twombly should be limited to its antitrust context was not supported by that case or the Federal Rules. Second, the Court found that Rule 9(b), which requires particularity when pleading “fraud or mistake” but allows “other conditions of a person’s mind [to] be alleged generally,” did not require courts to credit a complaint’s conclusory statements without reference to its factual context.

Law professor Herman Schwarzt discusses the aftermath of Iqbal in his article published Sept. 30th in The Nation

In the few months since the decision in Iqbal came down, it has resulted in the dismissal of 1500 District Court and 100 appellate court cases, many if not most of which would probably have survived; more dismissal motions are pending. Complaints against drug and other companies for multi-organ failure after taking an epilepsy drug, for false marketing and for excessive lead in baby bottle coolers have all been thrown out at the pleading stage, as have many civil rights cases. Iqbal has also been used to dismiss a First Amendment suit by anti-Bush protesters against the Secret Service, and complaints against Coca-Cola and its Colombian subsidiaries for the murder and torture of trade unionists. In all these cases, the mental element–what defendants knew and when they knew it–is usually crucial, and without going into a defendant’s files and oral questioning of knowledgeable people, that cannot be determined.

With the future of thousands of potential lawsuits at stake, many of these insurance class actions, expect a battle royale between lobbyists for the trial lawyers and the business community.

The practice of paying different rates based on gender for the same insurance is called gender rating. Effective January 1, 2010, health insurance companies and HMO’s writing insurance in California will not be able to charge men and women different rates for the same type of insurance policy. It has been reported that currently, California women pay anywhere from 5% to 30% more than male counterparts for equivalent insurance, even on policies without maternity coverage.

The issue was helped along by San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera who sued state officials for gender rating, claiming that the practice violates provisions of the California Constitution. The suit was stayed while details of the bill were negotiated and, in light of the new California health insurance law, will likely be dismissed.

As reported by the Associated Press, a House committee has voted to strip the health insurance industry of its exemption from federal antitrust laws as senators announced plans to take the same step. The House Judiciary Committee voted 20 to 9 to repeal a law that exempted the health insurance industry from federal controls over certain antitrust violations, including price-fixing. It is our belief that this repeal will not likely survive any national healthcare bill.

On Monday October 19, 2009, Lisa Girion of the Los Angeles Times reported on the healthcare reform bills being debated in Congress and their potential impact on claim denials by insurers. Girion states that, “Despite growing frustration with the way health insurers deny medical treatments, major healthcare bills pending in Congress would give patients little new power to challenge those sometimes life-and-death decisions.” She further explains that “a patient’s ability to fight insurers’ coverage decisions could be more important than ever because Congress, in promoting cost containment and price competition, may actually add to the pressure on insurers to deny requests for treatment.”

The article discusses the wrongful death lawsuit filed by Hilda and Grigor Sarkisyan, whose daughter Nataline died in 2007 after Cigna decided not to cover a liver transplant. The lawsuit against Cigna over the transplant denial was dismissed this year by a federal judge, who ruled that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (“ERISA”) preempts suits with state law claims for damages over such health benefit decisions. The Sarkisyans traveled to Washington this year to try to persuade members of Congress to pass legislation which would remove ERISA’s bar of certain types of damages that are now available under state law.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), who met with the Sarkisyans in Washington, said that there are not enough votes in Congress to pass such legislation. Insurers and employers strongly support ERISA’s limitations on damages. They say any increase in litigation would drive up costs and could force some employers to drop health benefits.

The healthcare reform bill pending in the House would extend the right to sue under state law for damages to anyone who buys coverage through one of the health insurance exchanges it envisions. That could include small businesses. However, the pending legislation does not remove ERISA’s barrier to such suits by employees who procure coverage in the employment-based insurance market.

In Marin General Hospital v. Modesto & Empire Traction Co., 581 F.3d 941 (9th Cir. 2009), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that section 502(a)(1)(B) of ERISA did not completely preempt state-law causes of actions for breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation, quantum meruit and estoppel brought by a hospital against a patient’s employer and its claims administrator based on an alleged oral agreement between the hospital and claims administrator to pay for services provided by the hospital. Because the claims could not be pursued under section 502(a)(1)(B), the Ninth Circuit concluded that the state-law claims were not preempted, depriving the court of subject matter jurisdiction. Accordingly, removal from state court was improper and the case was remanded to the district court with instructions to remand the matter to state court.

Marin General Hospital (“Hospital”) contended that its representative spoke to a representative of Medical Benefits Administrators of M.D. Inc. (“Medical Benefits”) on April 8, 2004 to confirm that a prospective patient had health insurance through a plan provided by his employer, Modesto & Empire Traction Co., and administered by Medical Benefits. The Hospital contended that the Medical Benefits representative verbally verified the patient’s coverage, authorized treatment, and agreed to cover ninety-percent of the patient’s medical expenses. The Hospital sued Medical Benefits and Modesto & Empire in state court and the defendants successfully removed the case to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claiming that ERISA completely preempted the claims. The district court subsequently dismissed the Hospital’s complaint, concluding that the only remedy available was under ERISA § 502(a)(1)(B).

The Ninth Circuit first found the parties “have not clearly understood the difference between complete preemption under ERISA § 502(a), 29 U.S.C. § 1132(a), and conflict preemption under ERISA § 514(a), 29 U.S.C. § 1144(a).” Complete preemption under § 502(a) is a jurisdictional doctrine. A party seeking removal based on federal question jurisdiction must show either that the state-law causes of action are completely preempted by § 502(a) of ERISA, or that some other basis exists.

The court then explained that removal was only proper if the Hospital’s state law claims were completely preempted under section 502(a)(1)(B) of ERISA. It then examined whether the claims asserted by the Hospital were completely preempted by ERISA, concluding that they were not. In reaching this conclusion, the Ninth Circuit clarified a distinction between complete preemption under section 502(a) and conflict preemption under section 514(a). Citing to Franciscan Skemp Healthcare, Inc. v. Central States Joint Board Health & Welfare Trust Fund, 538 F.3d 594, 596 (7th Cir. 2008), the Ninth Circuit explained that complete preemption under section 502(a) is “really a jurisdictional rather than a preemption doctrine, [as it] confers exclusive federal jurisdiction in certain instances where Congress intended the scope of a federal law to be so broad as to entirely replace any state-law claims.” In contrast, the “rule is that a defense of federal preemption of state-law claims, even conflict preemption under section 514(a) of ERISA, is an insufficient basis for original federal question jurisdiction.”

Relying on Aetna Health Inc. v. Davila, 542 U.S. 200, 210 (2004), the Ninth Circuit explained that a state-law cause of action is completely preempted by section 502(a)(1)(B) if: (1) “an individual, at some point in time, could have brought [the] claim under ERISA section 502(a)(1)(B);” and (2) “where there is no other independent legal duty that is implicated by a defendant’s actions.” Based on this conjunctive two-prong test, the Ninth Circuit concluded that the Hospital’s state-law claims were not pre-empted.

The U.S Supreme Court’s Iqbal Opinion to Get Congressional Airing

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