Two Princeton students were in a relationship so toxic that it had to be settled in the Third Circuit. Doe, a male, and Roe, a female, dated while they were students at Princeton. It was a violent and unstable relationship. When they broke up, each went to departments in the college to share their allegations against the other, culminating in the school’s report, which found evidence to support the incidents of physical abuse alleged by Roe, but nothing sufficient to confirm Doe’s claims. Doe received a letter explaining the punishment: expulsion from Princeton. Vindicated, Roe tweeted that “my life is good again . . . worked out boy problems that were never real problems just things I created.” Doe filed suit in federal court, and the District Court dismissed the case based on Rule 12(b)(6). The Third Circuit reversed, holding that Doe properly pleaded his case, even though the claims were inconsistent with the findings of Princeton’s investigation. The Court held that the school’s report was “integral to or explicitly relied upon in the complaint,” and it “may be considered without converting the motion to dismiss into one for summary judgment” under Rule 56. But when the well-pleaded facts of a complaint contest the truth of facts in an “integral” document, the complaint must prevail.
