Williams v. Ely’s Empirical Analysis
1996
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 12 district · 70 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 87 later decisions — most recently August 2022 · most notably 67 Cal. App. 4th 1509 - Crouse v. Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison (1998), Patsos v. First Albany Corp. (2001)
4 federal appellate · 12 district · 70 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 26 U.S.C. § 2518
Relies on Eli Lilly & Co. v. Medtronic, Inc. · Riley v. Presnell · Hendrickson v. Sears · Jewett v. Commissioner · Bowen v. Eli Lilly & Co.
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 87 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It does not matter that the opinion . . . was a reasonable view of the law . . . The problem is not that Gaston Snow gave reasonable advice that in time proved to be wrong. The problem is that the apparent certainty of the opinion given, at a time when the issue was not conclusively resolved, denied the plaintiffs the opportunity to assess the risk and to elect to follow alternative . . . options.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“The statute of limitations does not begin to run on a claim of malpractice until the plaintiff knows or reasonably should know that he or she has been harmed by the defendant’s conduct... The plaintiff need not know the extent of the injury or know that the defendant was negligent for the cause of action to accrue .. . Once the client or former client knows or reasonably should know that he or she has sustained appreciable harm as a result of a lawyer’s conduct, the statute starts to run.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Some of our opinions have stated that a plaintiff seeking to show that the statute of limitations did not begin to run must demonstrate that the claim was 'inherently unknowable,' a standard that is no different from, and is used interchangeably with, the 'knew or should have known' standard.”
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.