Kerr v. Quinn’s Empirical Analysis
692 F.2d 875 · 1982
Citation profile
21 federal appellate · 6 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 63 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2015 · most notably City of Riverside v. Rivera (1986), Evans v. Jeff D. Ex Rel. Johnson (1986)
21 federal appellate · 6 district · 1 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
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1988
Relies on Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc. · California v. Civil Aeronautics Board · Zarcone v. Perry · Wheatley v. Ford · Milwe v. Cavuoto
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 63 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The function of an award of attorney's fees is to encourage the bringing of meritorious civil rights claims which might otherwise be abandoned because of the financial imperatives surrounding the hiring of competent counsel.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'should ordinarily recover an attorney's fee unless special circumstances would render an award unjust'”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The district court’s discretion to deny fees begins, therefore, only after an initial determination that the plaintiffs claim was so strong on the merits and so likely to result in a substantial judgment that counsel in similar cases could be easily and readily retained. Only after this threshold has been crossed may a district court proceed to the second step and exercise discretion to deny counsel fees if it believes an award would work an injustice.”
2 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.