explaining that a court’s evaluation of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion is “generally limited to a review of the allegations in the complaint itself,” though a court also may consider “documents that are explicitly incorporated into the complaint by reference,” those “attached to the complaint as exhibits,” and documents that are considered “integral to the complaint,” provided there is no dispute about the document’s authenticity
How later courts described this case
- explaining that a court’s evaluation of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion is “generally limited to a review of the allegations in the complaint itself,” though a court also may consider “documents that are explicitly incorporated into the complaint by reference,” those “attached to the complaint as exhibits,” and documents that are considered “integral to the complaint,” provided there is no dispute about the document’s authenticity
- concluding that a document attached by the defendants to their motion to dismiss was “arguably . . . not integral to the complaint and therefore should not have been considered by the district court” because the plaintiff’s “claims [did] not turn on, nor [were] they otherwise based on, statements contained in the” document, even though “the complaint included a few quotes from and references to” that document
- explaining that, in evaluating a motion to dismiss a pleading, the court may “consider documents that are explicitly incorporated into the [pleading] by reference[,] . . . those attached to the [pleading] as exhibits[,] . . . [and those] submitted by the movant . . . , so long as the document was integral to the [pleading] and there is no dispute about the document’s authenticity”
- explaining that “where the plaintiff attaches or incorporates a document for purposes other than the truthfulness of the document, it is inappropriate to treat the contents of that document as true” and that “before treating the contents of an attached or incorporated document as true, the district court should consider the nature of the document and why the plaintiff attached it”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
NIEMEYER, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I am pleased to concur in Chief Judge Traxler’s fine opinion, recognizing his nu *174 anced articulation of how the pleader may variously use a document incorporated into the complaint. I write this brief concurrence only to note that, in determining qualified immunity, we need not recognize only the pleader’s version of the facts that are stated in the incorporated document if the document is taken to state those facts accurately from the defendants’ point of view, here the officers’ point of view. Thus, if the document — in this case, the Incident Report — were taken to state accurately the officers’ perceptions, we could use those perceptions to determine qualified immunity. See Rowland v. Perry, 41 F.3d 167, 173 (4th Cir.1994). In Rowland , Judge Wilkinson wrote:
Though it focuses on the objective facts, the immunity inquiry must be filtered through the lens of the officer’s perceptions at the time of the incident in question. Such a perspective serves two purposes. First, using the officer’s perception of the facts at the time limits second-guessing the reasonableness of actions with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Second, using this perspective limits the need for decision-makers to sort through conflicting versions of the “actual” facts, and allows them to focus instead on what the police officer reasonably perceived.
Id. (emphasis added) (citations omitted).
On remand, the officers will be able to supply their own affidavits of their perceptions at the time of the incident, thus enabling the district court to conduct an appropriate analysis of their qualified immunity defense.