220 Mich. App. 295 - Bennett v. Weitz’s Empirical Analysis
1997
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently March 2026
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.
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.
“Additionally, we decline to impose a duty upon defendants to pay the contingency fee of plaintiffs’ counsel as a matter of policy. Under the traditional “American rule,” each side must bear its own litigation expenses, unless the law or court rules specify an exception. This rule was designed to ensure that private parties who pursue individual remedies bear the expense of litigation under most circumstances. By rejecting the mediation award, plaintiffs and their counsel assumed the risk that the verdict would be lower than the award. Defendants should not be made to pay plaintiffs’ attorney fees merely because plaintiffs lost their gamble. No special equitable circumstances exist to support the collection of plaintiffs’ contingent attorney fees from defendants.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“the party who demands a trial by rejecting a proposed [case evaluation] award.”
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.