Peck v. Heurich’s Empirical Analysis
167 U.S. 624 · 1897
Citation profile
73 federal appellate · 11 district · 20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 147 later decisions (20 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2011 · most notably Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. v. Sperling (1990), Adkins v. E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. (1948)
73 federal appellate · 11 district · 20 state decisions — followed in 10 states
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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Vicksburg v. O'Brien · Roberts v. Cooper · Burnes v. Scott · Deery v. Cray
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 147 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““According to the common law, as generally recognized in the United States, wherever it has not been modified by statute, and certainly as prevailing in the District of Columbia, an agreement by an attorney at law to prosecute at his own expense a suit to recover land in which he personally has and claims no title or interest, present or contingent, in consideration of receiving a certain proportion of what he may recover, is contrary to public policy, unlawful, and void, as tending to stir up baseless litigation.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““We must regard an agreement by any attorney to undertake the conduct of a litigation on his own account, to pay the costs and expenses thereof, and to receive as his compensation a portion of the proceeds of the recovery, or of the thing in dispute, as obnoxious to the law against champerty.””
1 later decision 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.