Jones v. Espy’s Empirical Analysis
10 F.3d 690 · 1993
Citation profile
8 federal appellate · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently March 2018
8 federal appellate · 1 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2412 · 42 U.S.C. § 1988
Relies on Corder v. Gates · Southeast Legal Defense Group v. Adams · Harris v. Sullivan · Sullivan v. W Sullivan · Dewalt v. Sullivan
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Attorney fee awards are capped at $75 per hour under the terms of section 2412(d)(2)(A), “unless the court determines that an increase in the cost of living ... justifies a higher fee.” Congress neither defined “cost of living” nor specified an index or other data to be used in calculating increases in the cost of living. “Cost of living,” however, is a term with a commonly understood meaning. As commonly understood, the term means the costs of food, shelter, clothing, and other basic goods and services needed in everyday life. It is highly unlikely that Congress would have chosen this commonly used term, which is widely understood to be a composite of almost exclusively nonlegal costs, [citation omitted], had it intended to authorize adjustments to reflect increases in legal service costs in particular; if this had been its intent, it would have simply stated the $75 cap applies “unless the court determines that an increase in the cost of legal services ... justifies a higher fee.” ... The structure of section 2412(d)(2)(A) confirms that Congress intended for the term “cost of living” to assume its ordinary meaning. If an adjustment for increases in the cost of legal services were allowed, the exception for legal services to the general rule that fee awards should reflect “prevailing market rates” would be meaningless; attorney fees, like all other fees, would be awarded at the prevailing market rates.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Elcyzyn v. Brown“in order to ensure that a defendant is not liable for a fee award greater than the actual fees incurred against that defendant,”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.