The purpose of this rule is to help prevent a person from abusing the judicial process to defame another without spelling out the specific circumstances surrounding the alleged fraud.
The leniency of the modern notice pleading system sometimes resulted in poorly-drafted complaints with vaguely phrased, incoherent and conclusory allegations.
In Twombly and Iqbal, the U.S. Supreme Court sought to clarify the deceptively simple mandate of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2), which states that a "pleading that states a claim for relief must contain...a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitle to relief[.
[8] It is still not clear whether Iqbal will reduce federal court caseloads by allowing frivolous or weak lawsuits to be thrown out at the pleading stage, prior to the commencement of potentially expensive discovery.
The Twombly and Iqbal decisions (often referred to collectively as Twiqbal) have the potential of denying plaintiffs with meritorious claims their day in court by raising insurmountable hurdles at the pleading stage.