Witko v. C’s Empirical Analysis
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 1 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 58 later decisions — most recently January 2021 · most notably Bracewell v. Kelley (2006), Tyler v. DH Capital Management, Inc. (2013)
5 federal appellate · 1 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
Relies on Butner v. United States · United States v. Whiting Pools, Inc. · Segal v. Rochelle · Barnhill v. Johnson · Thomas Southtrust Bank of Alabama Na v. Thomas
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 58 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The machinations of legal malpractice, especially the element requiring the conclusion of judicial proceedings, distinguish legal malpractice actions from virtually all other tort claims. Although proximate harm usually occurs in close temporal proximity to tortious conduct, legal malpractice harm often arises well after the attorney's failures.... Witko did not suffer any harm from the alleged legal malpractice prior to or contemporaneous with filing his bankruptcy petition .... Witko's malpractice cause of action was unknown, not even rising to a hope; the most pessimistic curmudgeon could not anticipate that, months later, Witko would lose his alimony claim due to his attorney's malpractice.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“all legal or equitable interests of the debtor in property as of the commencement of the case.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Applying the appropriate state law, [the debtor’s] legal malpractice cause of action did not exist until his alimony action concluded with an adverse outcome that was proximately caused by his attorney’s negligence. “Under Florida law, a cause of action for legal malpractice has three elements: (1) the attorney’s employment; (2) the attorney’s neglect of a reasonable duty; and (3) the attorney’s negligence was the proximate cause of loss to the client.” In re Alvarez, 224 F.3d at 1276 (citing Steele v. Kehoe, 747 So.2d 931, 933 (Fla.1999)). Discussing the third element, the Florida Supreme Court unambiguously held that until the underlying action is concluded with an outcome adverse to the client (ie., harm), “a malpractice claim is hypothetical and damages are speculative.” Silvestrone v. Edell, 721 So.2d 1173, 1175 (Fla.1998); see Blumberg v. USAA Cas. Ins. Co., 790 So.2d 1061, 1065 (Fla.2001)(“[I]n the circumstances presented here, a negligence/malpractice cause of action accrues when the client incurs damages at the conclusion of the related or underlying judicial proceedings ... .”).”
1 later decision 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.