September 10th, 2007
RIAA boilerplate complaint thrown out
Few would have expected a Supreme Court decision limiting plaintiffs’ ability to sue telcos for alleged conspiracy and price-fixing to result in damage to the Recording Industry Association of America. That is the result, however, of Bell Atlantic v. Twombley, a Supreme Court decision that held that proof that the telcos acted in ways consistent with a plausible conspiracy was insufficient to sustain an action.
“An antitrust conspiracy plaintiff with evidence showing nothing beyond parallel conduct is not entitled to a directed verdict,” Justice David Souter wrote in that decision.
District Court Judge Rudi M. Brewster relied on Bell Atlantic to throw out the RIAA’s boilerplate complaint against one Yolanda Rodriquez, who had failed to respond to the complaint, reports Ars Technica..
In refusing to grant the RIAA a default judgment against Rodriguez, the judge said the RIAA had failed to “sufficiently state a claim on which relief can be granted” as required in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8.
“[O]ther than the bare conclusory statement that on ‘information and belief, Defendant has downloaded, distributed and/or made available for distribution to the public copyrighted works, Plaintiffs have presented no facts that would indicate that this allegation is anything more than speculation,” wrote the judge. “The complaint is simply a boilerplate listing of the elements of copyright infringement without any facts pertaining specifically to the instant Defendant.”
Rodriquez had failed to defend the RIAA’s suit in any way, which ordinarily would have resulted in a default judgment against her. The judge vacated the default judgment and gave the RIAA 30 days to refile a proper complaint. Ars notes, though, that:
There’s still a great deal of “information and belief,” however. The RIAA is “informed and believe[s]” that Rodriguez “had continuously used and continued to use a P2P network to download and/or distribute to the public” the files contained in the shared folder as well as “additional sound recordings owned by or exclusively licensed to” the labels.
Even so, this amended complaint may be enough to win a default judgment against Rodriguez if she continues to ignore the proceedings. What’s of real interest, however, is the application of Bell Atlantic to the RIAA’s claims of copyright infringement based solely on the existence of files in the defendant’s shared folder.
Defendants in Elektra v Barker and Warner v Cassin are arguing that the RIAA’s claims fail to show evidence of actual copyright infringement. They merely show the potential for infringement.
Thanks to Judge Brewer, those defendants will be sure to cite Bell Atlantic’s holding that:
“[A] plaintiff’s obligation to provide the ‘grounds’ of his ‘entitlement to relief’ requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do. Factual allegations must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level.”
