RSM, Inc. v. Herbert’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 federal appellate · 4 district ·

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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “To be sure, a single, or even a few, inadvertent errors in failing to complete forms may not amount to “willful” failures, even when the legal requirement to complete the forms was known. Yet at some point, when such errors continue or even increase in the face of repeated warnings given by enforcement officials, accompanied by explanations of the severity of the failures, one may infer as a matter of law that the licensee simply does not care about the legal requirements. At that point, the failures show the licensee’s plain indifference and therefore become willful.”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. American Arms International v. Herbert · United States v. Blankenship

2. “[W]hen determining the willfulness of conduct, we must determine whether the acts were committed in deliberate disregard of, or with plain indifference toward, either known legal obligations or the general unlawfulness of the actions. But when applying such a formulation of willfulness to an omission — the failure to act — there is seldom direct evidence that a person intentionally failed to do something that was legally required. Thus, when evaluating omissions alleged to be deliberate, it is often necessary to ascertain whether the failure to act resulted from a conscious consideration of the legal requirement to act. While evidence of willfulness in this context may be more elusive than in the context of affirmative actions, a court may infer willful omission from a defendant’s plain indifference to a legal requirement to act if the defendant (1) knew of the requirement or (2) knew generally that his failure to act would be unlawful. Because most of Valley Gun’s violations in this case were omissions and in the absence of direct evidence establishing intentionality, we must evaluate the evidence to determine whether Valley Gun showed plain indifference towards known legal requirements to act or a more generalized knowledge that its failure to act would be unlawful.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 727 F. Supp. 2d 1146 - Borchardt Rifle Corp. v. Cook

3. “conclude[d] that the long history of repeated failures, warnings, and explanations of the significance of the failures, combined with knowledge of the legal obligations, readily amounts to willfulness as used in 18 U.S.C. § 923 (e). While we need not here delineate at what point in the course of [the petitioner’s] repeated failures willfulness could have been inferred, their number and seriousness in this case in the face of repeated warnings undoubtedly satisfy the willfulness requirement.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Gilbert v. Bangs