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<i>Twombly</i> and <i>Iqbal</i> As Applied to Non-Fraud No-Injury Claims

By James Rotondo and Kaitlin Canty

One of the most fundamental tenets every law student learns is that plaintiffs must establish an injury to prevail in their case. For years, a class of cases known as “no-injury” product liability claims have been addressed by courts and mostly have been dismissed. Plaintiffs in these cases bring causes of action based on a product's performance, but do not allege that they suffered injury from the product. Another fundamental proposition that every law student entering law school after 2007 learns is that, to survive a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a complaint must be plausible on its face. Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007), and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009), have had a far-reaching impact on civil cases.

This article explores the application by a number of courts of the Twombly and Iqbal standards to no-injury cases involving breach of warranty claims. As the cases demonstrate, no-injury claims, which were already receiving increased scrutiny pre- Twombly and Iqbal, have frequently been dismissed under the plausible pleading standard. Two cases that have managed to survive the Twombly and Iqbal standards are also examined. The article concludes with some practical considerations for preparing motions to dismiss no-injury claims in light of the plausibility standard and recent cases.

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