On January 29, 2021, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit decided Martinez v. UPMC Susquehanna, sending a series of holdings into the world with little fanfare. The organizations and law firms that did report on the decision discussed the narrowest holding that the appellant/plaintiff, Dr. Zeferino Martinez, did not need to identify his successors’ ages in his complaint to satisfy the elements of a prima facie case of employment discrimination. However, the decision speaks to something far deeper. In the fifteen years since the Supreme Court overturned a half century of civil procedure precedent, the pleading standards have been in utter turmoil. The Court’s pronouncements in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, and then two years later in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, set civil procedure jurisprudence ablaze.
This Note argues that Martinez exemplifies the confusion engendered by Twombly and Iqbal plausibility pleading, a pleading regime that requires litigants to plead facts they do not and often cannot have at their disposal at the time of pleading. This Note further contends that Martinez‘s lack of patience for the legal fiction of pleading legal conclusions rightfully pushes the needle back toward the liberal notice pleading system, a system that works justice for plaintiffs seeking to have their day in federal court.
Section II outlines the facts and procedural history of Martinez. Part II.A of this Note begins with a discussion of the facts as pleaded by Dr. Martinez in the first amended complaint and its subsequent dismissal at the district court level. It then outlines the arguments on appeal from both the parties’ briefings and at oral argument in Part II.B. Section III outlines prior law with respect to two distinct but intertwined issues in the Martinez appeal. First, in Part III.A, this Note discusses the evolution of federal employment discrimination law and the burden-shifting test that has evolved to deal with proof in these types of cases. Second, in Part III.B, this Note discusses the evolution of pleading in the federal system with focus on the United States Supreme Court. Part III.C discusses key cases wherein the Third Circuit shaped its own understanding of both federal employment discrimination law and pleading. Section IV of this Note details Martinez’s central holding and reasoning. Finally, Section V of this Note illustrates how Martinez‘s inherently contradictory nature of a notice pleading system requires one to allege facts sufficient to show the plausibility of one’s claim after Twiqbal and how the legal fictions created by courts to reconcile these contradictions require a need for a more cohesive and just pleading standard.
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