Access to justice advocates worry that heightened pleading standards best represented by Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal are a difficult hurdle for plaintiffs. But they have entirely ignored a related development that may be an insurmountable one: the doctrine of stolen plausibility. Born at the same time the legal system has raised pleading standards, this doctrine holds that it is inherently illegitimate for plaintiffs to rely on litigation materials from third parties in their complaints, even where those materials furnish the only realistic source of information that would help plaintiffs satisfy heightened pleading standards and when the borrowed materials would make the complaint meritorious. To do this, courts have drawn on Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 11 and 12(f). This Article steps back from the narrow lens of these two Rules to examine the doctrine of stolen plausibility with broader considerations of fairness in mind. It makes a normative case for allowing plaintiffs to rely on third-party materials in their complaints to throw them a necessary lifeline in their struggles to survive motions to dismiss their complaints, to treat them the same as other parties in the legal system that rely on third parties’ work product, and to let them profit from government litigation materials designed to serve them above all else. It then demonstrates that neither the text nor the history of Rules 11 and 12(f) supports the doctrine of stolen plausibility. Finally, it asserts that the policy justifications that might support the doctrine of stolen plausibility—such as incentivizing plaintiffs to conduct diligent pre-suit investigations—are not strong enough to outweigh this Article’s fairness concerns.

中文翻译：

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被盗的合理性

诉诸司法的倡导者担心，以 Bell Atlantic Corp. 诉 Twombly 案和 Ashcroft 诉 Iqbal 案为代表的最高诉求标准对原告来说是一个困难的障碍。但他们完全忽略了一个可能是不可逾越的相关发展：被盗合理性学说。与法律制度提高诉求标准的同时诞生的这一原则认为，原告在其投诉中依赖第三方的诉讼材料本质上是非法的，即使这些材料提供了有助于原告的唯一现实信息来源满足更高的诉求标准，以及借用的材料何时会使投诉立功。为此，法院参考了联邦民事诉讼规则第 11 条和第 12(f) 条。本文从这两条规则的狭隘视角出发，以更广泛的公平考虑来审视被盗合理性学说。它为允许原告在其投诉中依赖第三方材料提供了一个规范的案例，为他们在驳回投诉的动议中生存提供了必要的生命线，并将其与法律体系中依赖第三方材料的其他当事方一视同仁。第三方的工作成果，并让他们从旨在为他们服务的政府诉讼材料中获利。然后证明，规则 11 和 12(f) 的案文和历史都不支持被盗合理性学说。最后，