Lee v. Nesbitt’s Empirical Analysis
453 F.2d 1309 · 1971
Citation profile
64 federal appellate · 3 district · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 104 later decisions — most recently July 1997 · most notably Lillian Yanks Rehmar v. Bernard L. Smith (1977), Alvares v. Erickson (1975)
64 federal appellate · 3 district · 5 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 29 U.S.C. § 186 (§ 302 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 (Taft-Hartley Act))
Relies on Roark v. Lewis · Roark v. Boyle · Dersch v. United Mine Workers of America Welfare & Retirement Fund · Stasukonis v. Kennedy
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 104 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Section 302 requires that a pension trust be “for the sole and exclusive benefit of employees.” The trustees of such a trust, while possessing a large measure of discretion in prescribing conditions of eligibility for benefits, owe a fiduciary duty to the employees and may neither impose unreasonable conditions of eligibility nor act arbitrarily in determining who is eligible.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[Lee] contends that the rule is unreasonable on its face because it also operates whenever a break is involuntary. This contention is too far reaching____denial of benefits can reasonably be rested upon an insufficiency of years of employment regardless of the reason.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“In sum, we conclude that the rule is unreasonable and hence invalid to the extent that it requires forfeiture of employment credits in the case of an employee who has accumulated the minimum number of credits to entitle him to a pension and then, due to unavailability of covered employment, suffers a break in employment during the interval remaining before his retirement.”
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.