Moore v. Scharnikow’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 state decisions

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

1. ““ ‘It may well be that an attorney, from prudential considerations, out of a just spirit of remembrance of his services and of rendering a precise charge against his client, and having due regard to the time occupied in his service, may make such constant and precise entries in respect to them, but it is difficult to conceive that while engaged in such an entire and continuous employment to enable a client to effect the settlement of an account in which he is interested, how the attorney could, with any justice, split up his charge for his services into items of fair legal individuality for each time that he saw or conversed with his client on the subject, or each occasion when he gave the matter any consideration, or saw and conversed with an opposite counsel or wrote a note to him on the subject. Such a system of exacting compensation for services as managing attorney in any particular transaction, unless expressing matter of agreement between the parties, would necessarily result in great unfairness, as entirely a departure from any just estimate of the value of an entire service in an entire though continuing employment.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Howley v. Fredricy

2. ““Where the retainer is general, and he advises his client or performs services in a number of distinct matters, he may properly be required to set out his charge for each separate matter, but when the services all relate to one subject it forms no just measure of the value of the services to separate the transaction into parts and have the attorney state what charge he made for- each several part. The only correct method is to view the services as a whole, since by no other method can one of its most important elements; namely, the result of the service to the client, be taken into account in estimating the value of the service.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Howley v. Fredricy

3. ““In a mercantile account, or in any account which is made up of several and distinct items, it is proper for the court to require that the value of each article be separately stated. So also a physician, since he bases the value of his services on the number of visits made the patient or the number of prescriptions given him, may be required to set out in his bill of items the charge made for each visit, or each prescription.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Sanborn v. Dentler