Trone v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
621 F.2d 994 · 1980
Citation profile
49 federal appellate · 20 district · 44 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 206 later decisions — most recently March 2019 · most notably United States v. Baker (1993), Evans v. Artek System Corp. (1983)
49 federal appellate · 20 district · 44 state decisions — followed in 17 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 Ohio Bureau of Employment Services v. Hodory · Helfat v. Securities & Exchange Commission · San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez · Emle Industries, Inc. v. Patentex, Inc. · Westinghouse Electric Corp. v. Kerr-McGee 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 206 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he underlying concern is the possibility, or appearance of the possibility, that the attorney may have received confidential information during the prior representation that would be relevant to the subsequent matter in which disqualification is sought. The test does not require the former client to show that actual confidences were disclosed. That inquiry would be improper as requiring the very disclosure the rule is intended to protect.”
13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Substantiality is present if the factual contexts of the two representations are similar or related.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[i]t matters not whether confidences were in fact imparted to the lawyer by the client. The substantial relationship between the two representations is itself sufficient to disqualify.”
8 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.