Pleading for Help — Ohio’s Time for Twombly (and Iqbal): Ohio Supreme Court to Consider Ohio Pleading Standards in Wilson Energy, LLC, et al. v. Redbird Dev. LLC et al.

Two companion cases from the Fourth District Court of Appeals — Wilson Energy and Bethel Oil & Gas — are currently on appeal at the Ohio Supreme Court. Both cases involve similar facts and require the resolution of the same legal issues.¹

In Wilson, the Plaintiff, Wilson Energy LLC, is an oil and gas operator who owns and operates wells across properties in Washington and Meigs counties. Defendants, including Redbird Development, LLC, operate injection wells in the same counties where Wilson conducts its drilling operations. The companies inject wastewater from hydraulic fracturing operations deep underground.

In 2020, a report from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (“ODNR”) indicated that significant quantities of waste fluid from an injection well operated by defendant Redbird Development, LLC, had contaminated 12 of Wilson’s wells. Wilson sued sixteen total defendants, many of whom are wastewater injection well operators with wells proximate to Wilson’s. Wilson alleged that it had suffered production losses from 31 wells due to the wastewater injections of defendants.

Wilson’s original complaint set forth seven causes of action against the sixteen defendants. In 2022, the trial court dismissed all claims against all parties, finding that “Wilson failed to allege sufficient facts to give the defendants notice of the claims against them.”² The trial court found that Wilson failed to answer the essential questions: “who” damaged the property in question; “what” property [defendants] damaged; “when” the property was damaged, etc.³ Additionally, the trial court denied Wilson’s motion to amend its complaint. Wilson appealed to the Ohio Fourth District Court of Appeals.

The Fourth District Court of Appeals reversed. On Wilson’s first assignment of error, the court found that Wilson had stated a claim, and the trial court had applied the incorrect pleading standard.

Ohio’s Pleading Standard

Ohio remains a “notice pleading” state, which means that outside of a few, limited circumstances, the pleader only needs to make a “short and plain statement” of the claim so that the defending party can understand the nature of the claim against him.⁴

The Ohio Supreme Court never adopted the heightened plausibility standard set out in Twombly and Iqbal to evaluate the merit of a claim.⁵ Under the plausibility standard, a party must plead “enough facts to state a claim for relief that is plausible on its face.”⁶ The goal of the plausibility standard is to protect against meritless claims by subjecting them to a narrow, stricter standard. In Ohio, the rule is applied much more broadly.

The different pleading standards require courts to conduct different analyses when deciding whether to dismiss a complaint for failing to state a claim.

To “survive” a motion to dismiss in Ohio, the pleader does not have to allege every fact that he or she intends to prove or plead the legal theories. Instead, as long as there is a set of facts which are consistent with the claim asserted, “the court may not grant a defendant’s motion to dismiss.”⁷ Whereas, under the plausibility standard, “if the well-pleaded facts do not permit the court to infer more than mere [possibility] of misconduct, the complaint has alleged but not show[n] that the pleader is entitled to relief.”⁸

The Fourth District Court of Appeals found that Wilson put forth sufficient facts from the ODNR report to support his causes of action and re-emphasized that the case at-hand involved the Ohio Rules of Civil Procedure, not the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.⁹

The appellate court found that the trial court wrongfully relied on reasoning from cases which used the heightened plausibility standard. In its holding, the court addressed that the questions of “who, what, when, and where” originated in case law using the heightened plausibility standard, and the answers to these questions are not necessary to avoid a motion to dismiss under Ohio’s current standard.¹⁰

Until the Ohio Supreme Court endorses a heightened pleading standard, courts should rely on the lower pleading standard when determining whether a complaint warrants dismissal for failure to state a claim.

This case is currently on appeal at the Ohio Supreme Court where advocates, including the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, urge the Court to adopt the heightened plausibility standard. Critics of Ohio’s current pleading standard have concerns for the discrepancy between state and federal systems, which could inevitably lead to forum-shopping. Additionally, Ohio’s current standard risks inefficiency and meritless claims making their way into Ohio courts.

Stay tuned.

Law clerk Kaitlyn Richard contributed to this article.

1. Wilson Energy, LLC v. Redbird Dev., LLC, 2024-Ohio-5609, ¶ 2.
2. Bethel Oil & Gas, LLC v. Redbird Dev., LLC, 2024-Ohio-5285, ¶ 23.
3. Id. at ¶ 23.
4. Id. at ¶ 39.
5. Id. at ¶ 37.
6. Bell Atl. Corp v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, (2007)
7. Bethel Oil & Gas, LLC v. Redbird Dev., LLC, 2024-Ohio-5285, ¶ 41 citing Beretta, 2002-Ohio-2480, at ¶ 29.
8. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 679 (2009).
9. Bethel Oil & Gas, LLC v. Redbird Dev., LLC, 2024-Ohio-5285, ¶ 47.
10. Id. at ¶ 46.