127 N.C. App. 483 - Pryor v. Merten’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

9 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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “North Carolina has not addressed the issue of whether an attorney, who before being discharged performed significant services for a client in a contingent fee relationship, may recover from the settling attorney in quantum meruit. Other courts have addressed and resolved the issue. Joye v. Heuer, 813 F.Supp. 1171 (D.S.C. 1993) (court approved of a quantum meruit distribution of the fees among the attorneys in direct proportion to the hours worked in the case); see also Potts v. Mitchell, 410 F.Supp. 1278 (W.D.N.C. 1976) (discharged attorney’s quantum meruit recovery was granted from funds being held as the contingency fee). We find these federal decisions persuasive and accordingly we conclude the trial court properly allowed the quantum meruit action by [the discharged attorney] to proceed. To require [the discharged attorney] to proceed against party plaintiffs would unfairly require plaintiffs to pay attorney’s fees in excess of the one-third contingency fee to which they agreed. See Covington, 38 N.C. App. at 65 , 247 S.E.2d at 308 . We believe the more equitable result is to allow the discharged attorney to proceed against the new attorney for the prior attorney’s rightful share of the total attorney’s fees.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 160 N.C. App. 325 - Guess v. Parrott