Blakey v. Continental Airlines, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
1998
Citation profile
3 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently March 2018
3 district · 3 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
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1367 · 42 U.S.C. § 2000E (§ 701 of the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) · 42 U.S.C. § 2000E (§ 706 of the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964)
Relies on Hensley v. Eckerhart · Missouri v. Jenkins Ex Rel. Agyei · City of Burlington v. Dague · Larry Nadeau v. Raymond A. Helgemoe, Warden, New Hampshire State Prison · Loeffler v. Frank
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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In these types of cases where the claims are interrelated, a court should not attempt to identify specific hours spent on related, but unsuccessful claims and exclude them from the lodestar. Johnson v. Orr, 897 F.2d 128 , 132 (3d Cir.1990) (Becker, J., concurring). A court should instead focus on the significance of the overall relief obtained by the plaintiff in relation to the hours reasonably expended on the litigation. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 435 [, 103 S.Ct. 1933 ]. A reduced fee is appropriate if the relief, however significant, is limited in comparison to the scope of litigation as a whole. Id. at 440 [, 103 S.Ct. 1933 ]; Rendine [ v. Pantzer ], 141 N.J. [292,] 337, 661 A.2d 1202 [(1995)]. "A court must reduce the fee award if `it concludes the benefits of the litigation were not substantial enough to merit the full amount of the lodestar.'" McDonnell v. United States, 870 F.Supp. 576, 587 (D.N.J.1994) ( quoting Poston v. Fox, 577 F.Supp. 915, 921 (D.N.J.1984)). Continental's attempt to automatically exclude every expenditure on which Blakey was ultimately unsuccessful must be rejected. Hours may be reasonably expended on a reasonable strategy that simply does not succeed. "The mere failure of certain motions or the failure to use depositions is insufficient to warrant a fee reduction under Hensley." Blum v. Witco Chem. Corp., 829 F.2d 367, 378 (3d Cir.1987).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“... a plaintiff has achieved only partial or limited success, [since] the product of hours reasonably expended on the litigation as a whole times a reasonably hourly rate may be an excessive amount. This will be true even where the plaintiffs claims were interrelated, nonfrivolous, and raised in good faith.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“) and the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (”
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.