160 N.C. App. 325 - Guess v. Parrott’s Empirical Analysis
2003
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently April 2023
12 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 Wood v. Guilford County · Saucier v. Hayes Dairy Products, Inc. · United Laboratories, Inc. v. Kuykendall · In Re Clark · Utilities Commission v. . Trucking Co.
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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“out of a dispute between attorneys for the firms of appellant Lloyd T. Kelso & Associates and appellee Melrose, Seago & Lay, P.A., as to entitlement to attorneys’ fees stemming from the underlying case. The underlying case involved an automobile accident... in which [the] plaintiff Johnny Robert Guess, Jr., was injured when his vehicle collided with a tractor-trailer driven by [the] defendant Terry Anthony Parrott. Shortly after the accident, [the] plaintiffs father and brother . . . contacted the appellee law firm of Melrose, Seago & Lay, P.A., and made arrangements with Randal Seago to represent [the] plaintiff. [The] plaintiff and Randal Seago entered into a contingency fee agreement in which [the] plaintiff promised to pay appellee one-third of any recovery. Further, [the] plaintiff would reimburse appellee for expenses and costs advanced by it. Mr. Seago went about the task of representing [the] plaintiff. He filed a complaint .... The parties negotiated at mediation, .... [but] a settlement could not be reached _Therefore, this matter went to trial... [with] a mistrial [eventually] declared. Following the unsuccessful trial, Seago and other attorneys at appellee law firm were involved in negotiations with their client, [the] plaintiff, and [the] defendants.... [The p]laintiff became dissatisfied with the representation provided to him by appellee law firm and informed them of such. Acceding to [the] plaintiff’s wishes, appellee filed amotion to withdraw [which was grant”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[a] contract for legal services is not like other contracts. The client has the right to discharge his attorney at any time, and it is our view that upon such discharge the attorney is entitled to recover the reasonable value of the services he has already provided. As the New York Court noted in Martin v. Camp, [ 219 N.Y. 170 , 114 N.E. 46 (1916)]: “The rule secures to the attorney the right to recover the reasonable value of the services which he has rendered, and is well calculated to promote public confidence in the members of an honorable profession whose relation to their clients is personal and confidential.” Id. at 176 , 114 N.E. at 48 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[t]he apportionment of attorneys’ fees among the various lawyers who have represented a party has not been regulated by statute and is therefore within the province of the trial court. Accordingly, appellant had no right to have the reasonable value of appellee’s services determined by a jury, as this issue is committed to the sound discretion of the trial court.”
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.