Hess v. Hartford Life & Accident Insurance’s Empirical Analysis
274 F.3d 456 · 2001
Citation profile
43 federal appellate · 3 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 118 later decisions — most recently June 2025 · most notably McDonald v. Western-Southern Life Insurance (2003), Elliott v. Metropolitan Life Insurance (2006)
43 federal appellate · 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 29 U.S.C. § 1001 (§ 2 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974) · 29 U.S.C. § 1132 (§ 502 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974)
Relies on Herzberger v. Standard Insurance · Judith Perlman v. Swiss Bank Corporation Comprehensive Disability Protection Plan · Gallo v. Amoco Corp. · Exbom v. Central States, Southeast & Southwest Areas Health & Welfare Fund
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.
“as long as (1) it is possible to offer a reasoned explanation, based on the evidence, for a particular outcome, (2) the decision is based on a reasonable explanation of relevant plan documents, or (3) the administrator has based its decision on a consideration of the relevant factors that encompass the important aspects of the problem.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[I]n evaluating a plan administrator's decision under an arbitrary and capricious standard of review, we should consider only the evidence that was before the administrator when it made its decision.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[i]n effect the judge is asked to decide the case as if there had been a bench trial in which the evidence was the depositions and other materials gathered in pretrial discovery”
2 later decisions 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.