Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air v. Commonwealth of Pa.’s Empirical Analysis
762 F.2d 272 · 1985
Citation profile
29 federal appellate · 4 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 61 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2009 · most notably Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air (1986), Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air (1987)
29 federal appellate · 4 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.
Appellate journey
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1988 · 42 U.S.C. § 7604 · 42 U.S.C. § 7607
Relies on Blum v. Stenson · Ruckelshaus v. Sierra Club · Boston Firefighters Union, Local 718 v. Boston Chapter, NAACP · 103 S. Ct. 247 - Beneficial Finance of Kansas, Inc. v. United States · American Paper Institute, Inc. v. American Electric Power Service Corp.
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 61 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The contingent nature of plaintiff's success has been apparent throughout this litigation. Plaintiffs entered the litigation against the U.S. Government and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The case involved new and novel issues, the resolution of which had little or no precedent. . . . [P]laintiffs have had to defend their rights under the consent decree due to numerous attempts by defendants and others to overturn or circumvent this court's Orders.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he Supreme Court recently held in Webb ... that fees may be recovered under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1988 for time spent by counsel pursuing 'optional administrative proceedings,' ... so long as counsel's work 'was both useful and of a type ordinarily necessary to advance the [civil rights] litigation' to the point where the party prevailed.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“this was 'the rare case where the fee applicant offer[ed] specific evidence to show that the quality of service rendered was superior to that one reasonably should expect in light of the hourly rates charged and that the success was exceptional.'”
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.