Vermont Low Income Advocacy Council, Inc. v. Usery’s Empirical Analysis
546 F.2d 509 · 1976
Citation profile
62 federal appellate · 17 district · 9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 125 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2019 · most notably Buckhannon Board and Care Home Incs v. West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (2001), Goland v. Central Intelligence Agency (1978)
62 federal appellate · 17 district · 9 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
Relies on Title Guarantee Co. v. National Labor Relations Board · Campbell v. United States Civil Service Commission · Kaye v. Burns · Goldstein v. Levi
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 125 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The court may assess against the United States reasonable attorney fees and other litigation costs reasonably incurred in any case under this section in which the complainant has substantially prevailed.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“In order to obtain an award of attorney fees in an FOIA action, a plaintiff must show at minimum that the prosecution of the action could reasonably have been regarded as necessary and that the action had substantial causative effect on the delivery of the information.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he criteria to be considered by the court in exercising its discretion [include]: (1) the benefit to the public, if any deriving from the case; (2) the commercial benefit to the complainant; (3) the nature of the complainant’s interest in the record sought; and (4) whether the government’s withholding of the records sought had a reasonable basis in law.”
3 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.