Harrington v. DeVito’s Empirical Analysis
656 F.2d 264 · 1981
Citation profile
92 federal appellate · 5 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 159 later decisions — most recently April 2006 · most notably Roland Machinery Company v. Dresser Industries Inc (1984), Munson v. Friske (1985)
92 federal appellate · 5 district · 7 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 Maher v. Gagne · Larry Nadeau v. Raymond A. Helgemoe, Warden, New Hampshire State Prison · Lewis v. United States · United Handicapped Federation v. Andre
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 159 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Generally, an abuse of discretion only occurs where no reasonable person could take the view adopted by the trial court. If reasonable persons could differ, no abuse of discretion can be found.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the defendant must not have acted wholly gratuitously, i.e. the plaintiffs' claims, if pressed, cannot have been frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“conforms to the policy underlying the award of attorney’s fees in civil rights cases. Attorney’s fees are not designed merely to penalized defendants, but to encourage injured individuals to seek judicial relief. From this latter policy perspective it makes no difference whether plaintiffs suit yields favorable out of court results because a good faith defendant is brought to understand the illegality of his conduct and alters his behavior or because an unrepentant defendant grudgingly signs a consent decree to avoid continued litigation expenses in a lost cause. The key issue is the provocative role of the plaintiffs lawsuit, not the motivations of the defendant.”
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.