Toussaint v. McCarthy’s Empirical Analysis
826 F.2d 901 · 1987
Citation profile
16 federal appellate · 2 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 35 later decisions — most recently February 2018 · most notably Gates, Coleen R. Roberts v. College of the Desert, C.A. Patterson, and Fern Stout (1989)
16 federal appellate · 2 district · 3 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 · Alyeska Pipeline Service Company v. Wilderness Society · Larry Nadeau v. Raymond A. Helgemoe, Warden, New Hampshire State Prison · Toussaint v. McCarthy · United Savings Ass'n of Texas v. Timbers of Inwood Forest Associates, Inc.
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 35 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Under section 1988 a prevailing plaintiff should ordinarily recover attorneys fees unless 'special circumstances' exist that militate against making such an award.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“The first step requires the district court to determine whether the successful and unsuccessful claims were unrelated ... “[C]laims are unrelated if the successful and unsuccessful claims are “distinctly different” both legally and factually,” ...; claims are related, however, if they ‘involve a common core of facts or are based on related legal theories.’ ... At bottom, ‘the focus is on whether the unsuccessful and successful claims arose out of the same “course of conduct.” ’ ... If they did not, the hours expended on the unsuccessful claims should not be included in the fee award.... If, however, ‘the unsuccessful and successful claims are related, then the court must apply the second part of the analysis, in which the court evaluates the significance of the overall relief obtained by the plaintiff in relation to the hours reasonably expended on the litigation.’ ... ‘Where a plaintiff has obtained excellent results, his attorney should recover a fully compensatory fee.’ When ‘a plaintiff has achieved only partial or limited success, [however,] the product of hours reasonably expended on the litigation as a whole times a reasonable hourly rate may be an excessive amount.’ ... Nonetheless, a plaintiff does not need to receive all the relief requested in order to show excellent results warranting the fully compensatory fee.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“succeeded on a significant issue and achieved some of the benefit [she] sought in bringing the suit,”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.