Spilker v. Hankin’s Empirical Analysis
188 F.2d 35 · 1951
Citation profile
39 federal appellate · 6 district · 42 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 118 later decisions — most recently May 2017 · most notably Bates v. Devers (1974), La Societe Anonyme des Parfums Le Galion v. Jean Patou, Inc. (1974)
39 federal appellate · 6 district · 42 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 Hilton v. Guyot · Baldwin v. Ionwa State Traveling Men's Ass'n · Kalb v. Feuerstein · People of State of New York Halvey v. Halvey · Kalb v. Feuerstein
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 118 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[f]ee contracts between attorney and client are a subject of special interest and concern to the courts. They are not to be enforced upon the same basis as ordinary commercial contracts. Especially is this true where ... a contract beneficial to the attorney is executed long after the attorney-client relationship has commenced, when the position of trust is well established, and the litigation involved is reaching its culmination. In some jurisdictions it has been held that such agreements are void. In other states contracts of such character are held to be affirmatively invalid on the ground of fraud, and the burden is on the attorney to show the fairness of the transaction in that the compensation provided for does not exceed a reasonable compensation for the services rendered or to be rendered. In re Howell, 215 N.Y. 466 , 109 N.E. 572, 574 . Many courts have gone so far as to say that they are attended by a presumption of invalidity and overreaching. They are always subject to the close scrutiny of the court whenever judicial enforcement is sought.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Jenkins v. McCoy · Crain v. Crain
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.