Auerbach v. Bennett’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
54 federal appellate · 33 district · 145 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 457 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2024 · most notably Kamen v. Kemper Financial Services, Inc. (1991), 552 F. Supp. 131 - United States v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co. (1983)
54 federal appellate · 33 district · 145 state decisions — followed in 23 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.
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 457 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the adequacy and appropriateness of the committee's investigative procedures and methodologies”
19 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[i]t appears to us that the business judgment doctrine, at least in part, is grounded in the prudent recognition that courts are ill equipped and infrequently called on to evaluate what are and must be essentially business judgments. The authority and responsibilities vested in corporate directors both by statute and decisional law proceed on the assumption that inescapably there can be no available objective standard by which the correctness of every corporate decision may be measured, by the courts or otherwise. Even if that were not the case, by definition the responsibility for business judgments must rest with the corporate directors; their individual capabilities and experience peculiarly qualify them for the discharge of that responsibility. Thus, absent evidence of bad faith or fraud [ ] the courts must and properly should respect their determinations.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“bars judicial inquiry into actions of corporate directors taken in good faith and in the exercise of honest judgment in the lawful and legitimate furtherance of corporate purposes.”
9 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.