Legal Sanity 'Discovered'

LEGAL SANITY 'DISCOVERED'
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Richard Epstein]
[Commentary] The WSJ continues the parade of supporters for a Supreme Court decision that ended a telecom antitrust case before it even got started. Today a Hoover Institution fellow and party in the case under discussion celebrates "what might become a welcome revolution in civil litigation." He reviews Twombly v. Bell Atlantic and concludes: "the Supreme Court faced a moment of truth: Did the plaintiff allege enough facts to make it socially wise to go through discovery, the next procedural step. Extensive FCC oversight, a Department of Justice investigation, and the powerful economic reasons for Bell operating companies to deploy capital elsewhere tipped the balance in favor of ending litigation promptly. One looming question is whether Twombly's healthy skepticism carries over, for example, to class-action claims in securities or antidiscrimination cases. It's too early to predict a system-wide transformation in congressional or judicial attitudes. But, given Twombly, both Congress and the courts are far likelier to end in a sensible place, system wide, if they keep asking this question: Has the plaintiff presented enough by way of evidence to justify any huge additional expenditures of public and private resources in pretrial discovery? One place to start is with across-the-board limitations on discovery, which include stronger judicial oversight coupled with requirements that the moving party bear some or all of the cost of document production and party depositions.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117997355435413006.html?mod=todays_us_op...
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