Beckman v. Farmer’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
7 federal appellate · 12 district · 33 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 65 later decisions — most recently February 2020 · most notably Williams Electronics Games, Inc. v. Garrity (2004), Clay Properties, Inc. v. Washington Post Co. (1992)
7 federal appellate · 12 district · 33 state decisions — followed in 11 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.
Relationships
Relies on Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H · Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corporation · Kotteakos v. United States · Harris v. McRae
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 65 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The crux of the Beckman opinion fully supports this conclusion. There the Court of Appeals explained that its holding stemmed from two fundamental principles of partnership law. First, dissolution of a law partnership does not terminate existing contracts with its clients. And second, former partners who honor these existing contracts do so as fiduciaries for the benefit of the former partnership. From these principles, the court concluded that work performed after dissolution to resolve pending cases is conducted for the benefit of the dissolved law partnership. The nature of the underlying contractual relationship between the dissolved partnership and its client does not alter the legal status of a dissolved partnership nor does it change the fiduciary duties each partner must honor towards another. They remain the same regardless of how an attorney agrees to be compensated by his clients.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[I]n the absence of a partnership agreement, the Uniform Partnership Act requires that attorneys’ fees received on cases in progress upon dissolution of a law partnership are to be shared by the former partners according to their right to fees in the former partnership, regardless of which former partner provides legal services in the case after the dissolution.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[C]ourts confronted with the dissolution of a CT Page 5389 law partnership have held that pending cases are uncompleted transactions requiring winding up after dissolution, and are therefore assets of the partnership subject to post dissolution distribution.”
2 later decisions 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.