Van Gemert v. Boeing Co.’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
10 federal appellate · 1 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 26 later decisions — most recently February 2007 · most notably Wildman v. Lerner Stores Corp. (1985), 618 F. Supp. 735 - In Re Warner Communications Securities Litigation (1985)
10 federal appellate · 1 district ·
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
Relies on Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co. · Starnes v. Penrod Drilling Co. · Sprage v. Ticonic Nat Bank · Cree v. Goldstein · Boeing Co. v. Van Gemert
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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]e do not approve the deduction for work on legal theories that proved “unfruitful” but were not found to have been frivolous. Lawyers for plaintiffs and objectors in derivative and or class actions, no less than other litigators, must evaluate, accept and prosecute suits on the basis of the entire spectrum of theories that show early promise of vindicating their clients’ rights. Every lawyer, indeed every judge, has pursued blind alleys that initially seemed reasonable or even professionally obligatory. To reward only the pursuit of a successful theory in cases such as this undercompensates the inevitable exploratory phases of litigation, and may also invite overly conservative tactics or even prohibit some high-risk but deserving actions entirely.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“Van Gemert II "), for the proposition that the common-fund exception to the American Rule is not limited to reimbursing expenses that benefited the fund, is misplaced. In Van Gemert II, the district court noted that "a litigant or a lawyer who recovers a common fund for the benefit of persons other than himself or his client is entitled to a reasonable attorney's fee from the fund as a whole”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“benefit which the plaintiff class received at each stage of th[e] litigation[ ] as a direct result of [the] petitioners' efforts.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.