Butler v. Pearson’s Empirical Analysis
636 F.2d 526 · 1980
Citation profile
35 federal appellate · 12 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 55 later decisions — most recently March 2018 · most notably Shea v. Donohoe Construction Co. (1986), Computer Professionals for Responsibility v. United States Secret Service (1996)
35 federal appellate · 12 district · 2 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 Link v. Wabash Railroad · Browder v. Director Department of Corrections of Illinois · Sweet v. United States · Radack v. Norwegian America Line Agency, Inc. · Jackson v. Washington Monthly Co.
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 55 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[p]ublic confidence in the legal system is not enhanced when one component punishes blameless litigants for the misdoings of another component of the system; to laymen unfamiliar with the fundamentals of agency law, that can only convey the erroneous impression that lawyers protect other lawyers at the expense of everyone else.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he concept of proportionality demands that plaintiffs not be unfairly penalized for negligence of their attorney. In these circumstances, we are persuaded that the drastic remedy of dismissal was disproportionate to the level of negligence shown.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“When the client has not personally misbehaved and his opponent in the litigation has not been harmed, the interests of justice are better served by an exercise of discretion in favor of appropriate action against the lawyer”
1 later decision 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.