Waller’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

7 district · 4 state decisions

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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “a contingent fee award would not be appropriate absent evidence that the Plan would have hired counsel on this basis”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. O'Brien & Wolf, LLP v. S. Cent. Minn. Elec. Workers' Family Health Plan · Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Associates' Health & Welfare Plan v. Scott

2. “"The very heart of the bargain when the insured purchases insurance is that if there is a loss he or she will be made whole. The cases that originally applied subrogation to insurance contracts ... never envisioned the use of subrogation as a device to fully reimburse the insurer at the expense of leaving the insured less than fully compensated for his loss." Powell v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield, 581 So.2d 772, 777 (Ala.1990). Employer-funded medical benefit plans should not be viewed in this fashion.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Associates' Health & Welfare Plan v. Scott · 846 So. 2d 179 - Yerby v. United Healthcare Ins. Co.

3. “we should not (and will not) penalize the Plan, or other similar ERISA plans for that matter, for lack of technical precision or verbosity by labeling the Plan “silent” or “ambiguous” when it uses the kind of direct, jargon-free language that is mandated by ERISA for all summary plan descriptions and does not expressly address every conceivable factual variation of recovery, depending on which combination of source and fraction is under consideration at the time. In other words, the fact that the SPD [summary plan description] for the Plan does not express a reimbursement priority for each possible combination or permutation — here, the beneficiary’s partial recovery from the tortfeasor’s insurer — is not a valid reason for branding the SPD as silent and subjecting it first to a search for the intent of the parties and then to a default rule of interpretation if their intent cannot be discerned. Far from the kind of silence that would be tantamount to ambiguity, the only silence here is the understandable absence of separate, specifically articulated rules for situations of partial recovery and total recovery with variations depending on the nature of the source of recovery. This signifies nothing more than that, regardless of source, the rule is the same for total and partial recoveries. Again, the absence of more particularized and technical legal language addressing the partial recovery situation cannot be grounds for supplanting the Plan Priority rule when recovery is par”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 22 F. Supp. 2d 343 - Walker v. Rose