Bruce S. Schlafly v. Anne S. Cori

Summary

The court held that the second amended petition sufficiently pleaded an abuse of process claim because it alleged that the defendant used a trust-validity lawsuit to pursue unlawful collateral objectives and employed litigation tactics to advance those objectives. At the motion-to-dismiss stage, the pleaded facts had to be accepted as true and construed favorably to the plaintiff, and the plaintiff was not required to plead evidentiary details showing precisely how the process was misused. The dismissal was therefore reversed and the case remanded.