Sympathy for the Plaintiff: 5th Circuit Relaxing Twombly Pleading Standards?

The Fifth Circuit recently reversed the dismissal on the pleadings of a products liability claim, noting the difficulties faced by plaintiffs who lack access to critical information in the defendants’ files. At least one other recent opinion voiced a similar concern in a Sarbanes-Oxley case.

This reasoning creates some tension with Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, the Supreme Court’s 2007 landmark about proper pleading, which considered and rejected such considerations in antitrust cases.