Kirchoff v. Flynn’s Empirical Analysis
786 F.2d 320 · 1986
Citation profile
57 federal appellate · 5 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 115 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2019 · most notably Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air (1987), Continental Illinois Securities Litigation: Steinlauf v. Continental Illinois Corporation Much Shelist Freed Denenberg Ament & Eiger (1992)
57 federal appellate · 5 district · 4 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 Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Hensley v. Eckerhart · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Daniels v. Williams · Imbler v. Pachtman
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 115 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] reasonable fee is the number of hours reasonably expended on the litigation multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate.... The [trial forum] also should exclude from this initial fee calculation hours that were not “reasonably expended.”- Counsel for the prevailing party should make a good-faith effort to exclude from a fee request hours that are excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary, just as a lawyer in private practice ethically is obligated to exclude such hours from his fee submission. “In the private sector, ‘billing judgment’ is an important component in fee setting. It is no less important here. Hours that are not properly billed to one’s client also are not properly billed to one’s adversary pursuant to statutory authority.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he use of contingent fees is appropriate in cases that enforce old precedents and allow effective compensation as a percentage of the total recovery,”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[o]ne common concern with compensation for risk is that the multiplier should rise as the probability of success falls, soaking the unlucky defendant who had a good case ... but lost anyway and therefore faced a huge multiplier.”
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.