Hendry v. Pelland’s Empirical Analysis
73 F.3d 397 · 1996
Citation profile
9 federal appellate · 27 district · 9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 54 later decisions — most recently January 2024 · most notably Burrow v. Arce (1999), Ideal Electronic Security Co. v. International Fidelity Insurance (1997)
9 federal appellate · 27 district · 9 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 Logarusic v. United States · Woods v. City Nat Bank & Trust Co of Chicago · Financial General Bankshares, Inc. v. Metzger · Sidney J. Brown v. James R. Coates, Marion E. Coates, and Margaret E. Brown · 67 Cal. App. 3d 6 - Jeffry v. Pounds
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 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]o the extent [the clients] sought disgorgement of legal fees, they needed to prove only that [the attorney] breached his duty of loyalty, not that his breach proximately caused them injury. Although we have found no District of Columbia cases precisely on point, courts in other jurisdictions have held that clients must prove injury and proximate causation in a fiduciary duty claim against their lawyer if they seek compensatory damages, not if, as here, they seek only forfeiture of legal fees. Even courts that sometimes do require a showing of injury and causation in claims seeking only forfeiture of legal fees have stated that it is not necessary when the clients’ claim is based, again as here, on a breach of the duty of loyalty.... The different treatment of compensatory damages and forfeiture of legal fees also makes sense. Compensatory damages make plaintiffs whole for the harms that they have suffered as a result of defendants’ actions. Clients therefore need to prove that their attorney’s breach caused them injury so that the trier of fact can determine whether they are entitled to any damages. Forfeiture of legal fees serves several different purposes. It deters attorney misconduct, a goal worth furthering regardless of whether a particular client has been harmed. It also fulfills a longstanding and fundamental principle of equity-that fiduciaries should not profit from their disloyalty. And, like compensatory damages, it compensates clients for a harm they have suff”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[Cjlients suing their attorney for breach of the fiduciary duty of loyalty and seeking disgorgement of legal fees as their sole remedy need prove only that their attorney breached that duty, not that the breach caused them injury.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Burrow v. Arce“considering the evidence in the light most favorable to [Ideal] and making all reasonable inferences in [its] favor.”
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.