Somuah v. Flachs’s Empirical Analysis
1998
Citation profile
2 district · 26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently June 2020 · most notably Attorney Grievance Com'n of Maryland v. Harris-Smith (1999), Attorney Grievance Commission v. Barneys (2002)
2 district · 26 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 Shoup Voting Machine Corp. v. Datamedia Computer Service, Inc. · 6 Cal. 3d 784 - Fracasse v. Brent · St. Paul at Chase Corp. v. Manufacturers Life Insurance · Post v. Bregman · Spivak v. Sachs
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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“If the discharged attorney sues to recover a percentage of the contingency fee, the new attorney must be joined as a party to the action because the discharged attorney’s recovery will be derived from the new attorney’s share of the recovery.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[W]here a client has a good faith basis to terminate the attorney-client relationship but there is no serious misconduct warranting forfeiture of any fee, the attorney is enti tied to compensation based on the reasonable value of services rendered prior to discharge, considering as factors the reasonable value of the benefits the client obtained as a result of the services rendered prior to discharge and the nature and gravity of the cause that led to the attorney’s discharge.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“In situations where an attorney is discharged because the client has a good faith basis for being dissatisfied with the attorney, but the attorney’s conduct was not wrongful in the sense that forfeiture of all fees would be justified, we strike a balance between the client’s absolute right to discharge his or her attorney and the attorney’s right to fair compensation for services competently rendered prior to discharge.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.