Rice v. Multimedia, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
1995
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 38 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 50 later decisions — most recently April 2018 · most notably Futch v. McAllister Towing of Georgetown, Inc. (1999), Jackson v. Speed (1997)
2 federal appellate · 38 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 Rush v. Blanchard · Baron Data Systems, Inc. v. Loter · Apache East, Inc. v. Wiegand · Horry County v. Laychur · Crosswell v. Connecticut Indemnity Ass'n
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 50 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In case of any failure to pay wages due to an employee as required by Section 41-10-40 or 41-10-50 the employee may recover in a civil action an amount equal to three times the full amount of the unpaid wages, plus costs and reasonable attorney’s fees as the court may allow.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage“[T]here are some wage disputes when the issue may involve a valid close question of law or fact which should properly be decided by the courts. We do not believe the legislature intended to deter the litigation of reasonable good faith wage disputes; we do believe the legislature intended to punish the employer who forces the employee to resort to the court in an unreasonable or bad faith wage dispute.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“Thus, by using “may”, rather than “shall”, the legislature has provided that the penalty is discretionary with the judge. This interpretation accords with the purpose of the Wage Payment Act, to wit: to protect employees from the unjustified and wilful retention of wages by the employer. The imposition of treble damages in those cases ivhere there is a bona fide dispute would be unjust and harsh.”
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.