USS-POSCO Industries v. Contra Costa County Building & Construction Trades Council’s Empirical Analysis
31 F.3d 800 · 1994
Citation profile
30 federal appellate · 8 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 79 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2024 · most notably BE&K Construction Co. v. National Labor Relations Board (2002), Parino v. Fhp, Inc.
30 federal appellate · 8 district · 6 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.
Appellate journey
Relationships
Applies 29 U.S.C. § 104 (Norris-LaGuardia Act)
Relies on Associated General Contractors of California, Inc. v. California State Council of Carpenters · Eastern Railroad Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc. · California Motor Transport Co. v. Trucking Unlimited · United Mine Workers v. Pennington · United Mine Workers of America v. M Pennington Local Union No 189 Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America
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 79 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[PRE] provides a strict two-step analysis to assess whether a single action constitutes sham petitioning. This inquiry is essentially retrospective: If the suit turns out to have objective merit, the plaintiff can’t proceed to inquire into subjective purposes, and the action is perforce not a sham. [[Image here]] California Motor Transport ... recognized that the filing of a whole series of lawsuits and other legal actions without regard to the merits has far more serious implications than filing a single action, and can serve as a very effective restraint on trade. When dealing with a series of lawsuits, the question is not whether any one of them has merit— some may turn out to, just as a matter of chance — but whether they are brought pursuant to a policy of starting legal proceedings without regard to the merits and for the purpose of injuring a market rival. The inquiry in such cases is prospective: Were the legal filings made, not out of a genuine interest in redressing grievances, but as part of a pattern or practice of successive filings undertaken essentially for purposes of harassment?”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“must be objectively baseless in the sense that no reasonable litigant could realistically expect success on the merits”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“petitioning. See id. at 810 1 . Despite BE&K's arguments to the contrary, the court refused to conclude that the unions' lawsuits were frivolous and brought without regard to the merits. As noted in the court's opinion: 19 Here, . . . fifteen of the twenty-nine lawsuits alleged by BE&K as part of the pattern of filings”
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.