Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly (U.S. Supreme Court)

Subscribers to local phone and internet services brought a class action against several telecommunications companies, alleging a conspiracy to end competition among themselves and to exclude potential competitors. The complaint alleged that the companies had engaged in parallel conduct, but it offered no further allegations to substantiate the claim of a conspiratorial agreement. The legal question presented was whether allegations of parallel conduct, without more, are sufficient to state a claim under Section 1 of the Sherman Act. We represented one of the telecommunications companies, Bellsouth, in the effort that convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to answer that question in the negative. The Court made clear that an antitrust complaint must state enough factual matter to support a plausible claim for relief, not merely a speculative or conceivable one, in order to survive a motion to dismiss.