Hirsch v. du Pont’s Empirical Analysis
553 F.2d 750 · 1977
Citation profile
43 federal appellate · 12 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 126 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2025 · most notably Williamson v. Tucker (1981), Dupuy v. Dupuy (1977)
43 federal appellate · 12 district · 4 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 Ernst & Ernst v. Hochfelder · Starnes v. Penrod Drilling Co. · Securities & Exchange Commission v. W. J. Howey Co. · Patterson v. United States · Industrial National Bank of Rhode Island v. Wingate Corp.
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 126 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The securities laws were not enacted to protect sophisticated businessmen from their own errors of judgment. Such investors must, if they wish to recover under federal law, investigate the information available to them with care and prudence . . . .” Hirsch v. Du Pont, 553 F.2d 750, 763 (2d Cir. 1977).”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage““[gjiven the information they possessed, we believe any reasonable investor of the [plaintiffs’] level of sophistication would have made a further inquiry____ Had Gariboldi been interested, he could easily have obtained from [the brokerage firm] the precise magnitude of the deficiency. Had he done so, he surely would have inquired how the capital required to restore net capital compliance was secured. Gariboldi's failure to pursue this line of investigation suggests either that, despite appearances, the knowledge he would have discovered was immaterial, .see Titan Group, Inc. v. Faggan, 513 F.2d 234 (2d Cir.1975), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 840 , 96 S.Ct. 70 , 46 L.Ed.2d 59 (1975), or that Gariboldi failed to exercise due diligence to obtain important information, see Rochez Bros., Inc. v. Rhoades, 491 F.2d 402, 409-10 (2d Cir.1974), cert. denied, 425 U.S. 993 , 96 S.Ct. 2205 , 48 L.Ed.2d 817 (1976). “The securities laws were not enacted to protect sophisticated businessmen from their own errors of judgment. Such investors must, if they wish to recover under federal law, investigate the information available to them with the care and prudence expected from people blessed with full access to information. We believe that the diligence of the [plaintiffs] in this case fell far short of the mark.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“knowing assistance of or participation in a fraudulent scheme gives rise to liability under § 10(b) as an aider and abettor . . . knowledge of the fraud . . . is indispensable”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.