4. How does Twombly affect Federal Rule 11? The consensus is that under the 1993 version of Rule 11, sanctions are not warranted simply because a complaint does not survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion. However, one commentator reports that post-Iqbal, “there has been a veritable explosion of threatened sanctions,” observing that “one district judge has been citing Rule 11alongside Twombly and Iqbal as the standard governing the sufficiency of a plaintiff’s complaint.” Cooper, Iqbal’s Retro Revolution, 46 Wake Forest L. Rev. 937, 964

(2011). In addition, questions have been raised as to whether Twombly forecloses the kind of complaints that appear to be authorized by Rule 11(b). See Spencer,Plausibility Pleading, 49 B.C. L. Rev. 431, 471 (2008); but see Hartnett, Taming Twombly, Even After Iqbal, 158 U.

Pa. L. Rev. 473, 505 (2010) (plausibility is linked “to the likelihood of discovery producing evidentiary support”).

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