104 Ill. 2d 317 - Rakowski v. Lucente’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
57 federal appellate · 3 district · 133 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 282 later decisions — most recently July 2025 · most notably 226 Ill. 2d 208 - Gallagher v. Lenart (2007), 185 Ill. 2d 457 - Air Safety, Inc. v. Teachers Realty Corp. (1999)
57 federal appellate · 3 district · 133 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
Relies on 101 Ill. 2d 1 - Doyle v. Rhodes · Restifo v. McDonald · 101 Ill. 2d 196 - Alsup v. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. · 129 N.J. Super. 192 - Markey v. Skog · 97 Ill. 2d 515 - Stephens v. McBride
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 282 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"As a matter of public policy the settlement of claims should be encouraged. If we were now to add limitations not expressed in the general language of the settlement instrument or in the provisions of the Contribution Act, we would make those who desire to end litigation wary and uncertain of what they would accomplish by settlement." ( Rakowski v. Lucente (1984), 104 Ill.2d 317, 325 , 84 Ill.Dec. 654 , 472 N.E.2d 791 .)”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“What the parties to a written contract may have understood as to the meaning of the language used is not admissible in evidence. The intention or understanding of the parties, when there is a written contract in evidence, must be determined not from what the parties thought but from the language of the contract itself.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Where a written agreement is clear and explicit, a court must enforce the agreement as written. Both the meaning of the instrument, and the intention of the parties must be gathered from the face of the document without the assistance of parol evidence or any other extrinsic aids.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.