Lenard v. Argento’s Empirical Analysis
808 F.2d 1242 · 1987
Citation profile
50 federal appellate · 3 district · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 104 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2019 · most notably Continental Illinois Securities Litigation: Steinlauf v. Continental Illinois Corporation Much Shelist Freed Denenberg Ament & Eiger (1992), Ustrak v. Fairman (1988)
50 federal appellate · 3 district · 5 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. § 1988
Relies on Hensley v. Eckerhart · City of Riverside v. Rivera · Mary Beth v. City of Chicago Tikalsky · Chalmers v. City of Los Angeles · Lenard v. Argento
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 104 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“For tactical reasons and out of caution lawyers often try to state their client’s claim in a number of different ways, some of which may fall by the wayside as the litigation proceeds. The lawyer has no right to advance a theory that is completely groundless or has no factual basis, but if he presents a congeries of theories each legally and factually plausible, he is not to be penalized just because some, or even all but one, are rejected, provided that the one or ones that succeed give him all that he reasonably could have asked for.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"In [some] cases the plaintiff’s claims for relief will involve a common core of facts or will be based on related legal theories. Much of counsel’s time will be devoted generally to the litigation as a whole, making it difficult to divide the hours expended on a claim-by-claim basis. Such a lawsuit cannot be viewed as a series of discreet claims. Instead the district court should focus on the significance of the overall relief obtained by the plaintiff in relation to the hours reasonably expended on the litigation.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“a fee large enough to induce competent counsel to handle the plaintiff's case, but no larger.”
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.