Ninth Circuit Slams Overuse of "Judicial Note" and "Incorporation by Reference" on Motions to Dismiss

ATTORNEY: JENNIFER BANNER SOBERS
POMERANTZ MONITOR SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

Therapeutics, a securities case, put the spotlight on a tactic defendants have long overused in support of their motions to dismiss. On such motions, district courts, in deciding whether the complaint states a legal claim for relief, are required to accept plaintiffs’ well-pled allegations as true. Increasingly, defendants have sought an end-run around that requirement, routinely requesting that the court accept, as true, documents outside of the complaint which, they claim, disprove plaintiffs’ allegations. They invoke the doctrines of judicial notice and incorporation by reference to place this extrinsic evidence before the court for the purpose of disputing plaintiffs’ allegations and providing the court with their own version of the facts.

This practice may change, thanks to the detailed 59-page ruling by the Ninth Circuit in Orexigen, which condemned the “unscrupulous use of extrinsic documents to resolve competing theories against the complaint.” Such tactics “can undermine lawsuits and result in premature dismissals of plausible claims that may turn out to be valid after discovery.” The Ninth Circuit observed that this risk is especially significant in securities fraud cases, where there is a heightened pleading standard and the defendants possess materials to which the plaintiffs do not yet have access.

The court reversed the district court’s order dismissing the complaint, holding that the lower court had abused its discretion by judicially noticing two of the documents and incorporating by reference seven documents, and by considering statements in those documents as being true. The main takeaway for investors is the Ninth Circuit’s recognition of the improper use of judicial notice and incorporation by reference, which the panel admonished.

Courts may take judicial notice of undisputed matters of public record to the extent permitted by Rule 201 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. Judicial Notice is appropriate for the limited purpose of noting that the statements were actually made at the time and in the manner described in the complaint. But judicial notice is not appropriate for the purpose of determining the truth of any of those statements.

Here, the Ninth Circuit found that the district court abused its discretion by judicially noticing two exhibits attached to Orexigen’s motion to dismiss and, more importantly, by accepting as true various assertions in those documents. Those documents were an investor conference call transcript submitted with one of Orexigen’s Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, and a report issued by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Generally, documents filed with the SEC and documents issued by a governmental agency may be judicially noticed because they are from sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned. But, the Ninth Circuit importantly noted that accuracy is only one part of the inquiry under Rule 201(b) – a court must also consider and identify which facts it is accepting as true from such a transcript. Just because the document itself is susceptible to judicial notice does not mean that every assertion of fact within that document must be accepted, as is true on a motion to dismiss. The Ninth Circuit held that reasonable people could debate what the conference call and EMA report disclosed or established. Therefore, the Ninth Circuit found that to the extent the district court judicially noticed the identified facts on the basis of the investor call transcript and report, it had abused its discretion.

The doctrine of incorporation by reference permits a district court to consider, as part of the complaint itself, documents whose contents are alleged in the complaint and whose authenticity no party questions. The doctrine prevents plaintiffs from, for example, selectively quoting parts of documents in their complaint, or deliberately omitting references to documents upon which their claims are based. Defendants are allowed to correct such allegations by demonstrating what the operative documents actually say.

However, there are limits to the application of the incorporation by reference doctrine. First, the complaint must refer “extensively” to the document in question; a passing reference will not justify bringing the whole document into the record on the motion. Second, as an alternative, defendants may establish that a particular document, whether referenced in the complaint or not, may be incorporated if it actually forms the basis of the plaintiff’s claim.

But, what this doctrine clearly cannot permit, according to the Ninth Circuit, is defendants introducing a document that is not mentioned in the complaint or that does not necessarily form the basis of the complaint to merely create a defense to the well-pled allegations in the complaint. If this is permitted, then defendants would, in effect, be disputing the factual allegations in the complaint and thereby circumventing the rule requiring alleged facts in complaints to be accepted as true at the pleading stage. And, if the district court does not convert the motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment, which would provide both sides an opportunity to introduce evidence regarding the factual allegations, then plaintiffs would be left without an opportunity to respond to the new version of the facts, making dismissal of otherwise cognizable claims very likely.

Perhaps the most important limitation on the incorporation by reference doctrine is that while this doctrine, unlike judicial notice, permits courts to assume an incorporated document’s contents are true for purposes of a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), it is improper to assume the truth of an incorporated document if such assumptions only serve to dispute facts stated in a wellpled complaint. This is consistent with the prohibition against resolving factual disputes at the pleading stage.

As the Ninth Circuit correctly noted, judicial notice and incorporation by reference do have roles to play at the pleading stage. It is the overuse and improper application of the doctrines that can lead to unintended and harmful results. During oral argument in the Orexigen appeal, Judge Berzon asked defense counsel, “[T]here are all of these judicially noticed and incorporated documents, do any of them matter…we are turning these things into summary judgment proceedings – why don’t we just stick to the complaint?” These are apt and fundamental questions. Hopefully, this decision will help tip the scale back in the direction of identifying the documents outside the complaint that actually matter and ensuring that they are applied correctly so that potentially meritorious claims have a fighting chance of surviving motions to dismiss.