Glenn v. MetLife’s Empirical Analysis
461 F.3d 660 · 2006
Citation profile
33 federal appellate · 6 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 175 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2025 · most notably Metropolitan Life Insurance v. Glenn (2008), Montour v. Hartford Life & Accident Insurance (2009)
33 federal appellate · 6 district · 2 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. § 1132 (§ 502 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974) · 42 U.S.C. § 423 (§ 223 of the Social Security Act of 1935)
Relies on Firestone Tire and Rubber Company v. Bruch · Black & Decker Disability Plan v. Nord · Wilkins v. Baptist Healthcare System, Inc. · Calvert v. Firstar Finance, Inc. · Williams v. International Paper 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 175 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a deliberate, principled reasoning process.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“is not, however, without some teeth. Deferential review is not no review, and deference need not be abject.... [T]he district court ha[s] an obligation under ERISA to review the administrative record in order to determine whether the plan administrator acted arbitrarily and capriciously in making ERISA benefits determinations. This obligation inherently includes some review of the quality and quantity of the [ ] evidence and the opinions on both sides of the issues. Otherwise, courts would be rendered to nothing more than rubber stamps for any plan administrator’s decision as long as the plan was able to find a single piece of evidence — no matter how obscure or untrustworthy — to support a denial of a claim for ERISA benefits.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“both to decide whether an employee is eligible for benefits and to pay those benefits,”
2 later decisions 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.