Henry v. Webermeier’s Empirical Analysis
738 F.2d 188 · 1984
Citation profile
75 federal appellate · 5 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 142 later decisions — most recently September 2024 · most notably McNabola v. Chicago Transit Authority (1993), Continental Illinois Securities Litigation: Steinlauf v. Continental Illinois Corporation Much Shelist Freed Denenberg Ament & Eiger (1992)
75 federal appellate · 5 district · 6 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 28 U.S.C. § 1920 · 42 U.S.C. § 1988
Relies on Hensley v. Eckerhart · Blum v. Stenson · Ramos v. Lamm · Lenard v. Argento · Johnson v. University College of Alabama
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 142 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Probably [the appropriate billing rate] is the same billing rate as would be appropriate for the other time the lawyers put in on the case. When a lawyer travels for one client he incurs an opportunity cost that is equal to the fee he would have charged that or another client if he had not been traveling. That is why lawyers invariably charge their clients for travel time, and usually at the same rate they charge for other time, except when they are able to bill another client for part of the travel time (a lawyer might do work for client A while flying on an airplane to a meeting with client B). And if they charge their paying clients for travel time they are entitled to charge the defendants for that time in a case such as this where the plaintiffs have shown a statutory right to reasonable attorneys’ fees. Of course, if the travel is unnecessary the time spent in travel should be subtracted out, cf. Hensley v. Eckerhart, [ 461 U.S. 424 at 434], 103 S.Ct. [1933] at 1939-40 [ 76 L.Ed.2d 40 ]; but that, as we have said, is not an issue here. If, though reasonable in terms of the amount of time consumed, the travel is unnecessarily luxurious, the court should not reimburse the plaintiffs for the entire out-of-pocket expenses of travel; but that is a completely separate issue from the hourly billing rate and an issue that the defendants will be entitled to explore on remand. The presumption, which the defendants have not attempted to rebut, should be that a reasonable attorney’”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“disallow particular expenses that are unreasonable whether because excessive in amount or because they should not have been incurred at all.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[section 1988] seeks to shift the costs of the winning party's lawyer (in cases within the intended scope of the Act) to the losing party; and that cost includes the out-of-pocket expenses for which lawyers normally bill their clients separately, as well as fees for lawyer effort. The Act would therefore fall short of its goal if it excluded those expenses.”
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.