Cannon-Stokes v. Potter’s Empirical Analysis
453 F.3d 446 · 2006
Citation profile
15 federal appellate · 7 district · 14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 88 later decisions — most recently June 2026 · most notably Eastman v. Union Pacific Railroad (2007), White v. Wyndham Vacation Ownership, Inc. (2010)
15 federal appellate · 7 district · 14 state decisions — followed in 10 states
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.
Appellate journey
Relationships
Relies on State of New Hampshire v. State of Maine · United States v. Boyle · Hamilton v. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. · Astor Chauffeured Limousine Co. v. Runnfeldt Investment Corp. · Chaveriat v. Williams Pipe Line 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 88 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is impossible to believe that such a sizeable claim — one central to her daily activities at work — could have been overlooked when Cannon-Stokes was filling in the bankruptcy schedules. And if Cannon-Stokes were really making an honest attempt to pay her debts, then as soon as she realized that it had been omitted, she would have filed amended schedules and moved to reopen the bankruptcy, so that the creditors could benefit from any recovery. Cannon-Stokes never did that; she wants every penny of the judgment for herself.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[B]ad legal advice does not relieve the client of the consequences of her own acts. A lawyer is the client’s agent, and the client is bound by the consequences of advice that the client chooses to follow. Cannon-Stokes might as well say that she is free to ignore any contract that a lawyer advised her to sign with her fingers crossed behind her back. The lawyer’s role as agent is why the Supreme Court held in United States v. Boyle, 469 U.S. 241 , 105 S.Ct. 687 , 83 L.Ed.2d 622 (1985), that a taxpayer could not avoid paying interest and penalties occasioned by his lawyer’s mishandling of the return.... The remedy for bad legal advice lies in malpractice litigation against the offending lawyer.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“By making litigants choose one position irrevocably, the doctrine of judicial estoppel raises the cost of lying. A doctrine that induces debtors to be truthful in their bankruptcy filings will assist creditors in the long run (though it will do them no good in the particular case) — and it will assist most debtors too, for the few debtors who scam their creditors drive up interest rates and injure the more numerous honest borrowers.”
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.