Robbins v. Lynch’s Empirical Analysis
836 F.2d 330 · 1988
Citation profile
48 federal appellate · 5 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 101 later decisions — most recently March 2024 · most notably Central States, Southeast & Southwest Areas Pension Fund v. Gerber Truck Service, Inc. (1989), Olympia Hotels Corp. v. Johnson Wax Development Corp. (1990)
48 federal appellate · 5 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.
Relationships
Applies 29 U.S.C. § 1132 (§ 502 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974)
Relies on Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corporation · United States v. Diebold, Inc. · Langley v. Federal Deposit Insurance · Kaiser Steel Corp. v. Mullins · Baker v. Gold Seal Liquors, 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 101 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“... a signatory to a contract is bound by its ordinary meaning, even if he gave it an idiosyncratic one; private intent counts only if it is conveyed to the other party and shared ... This sense of “intent” denotes agreement between the parties and is not a license to allow undisclosed intent to dominate.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[Fjunds must assume all participants in a plan are following the stated terms; no other approach permits accurate actuarial computations and proper decisions about which claims to pay.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“hardly makes adherence to the agreement involuntary, as Lynch supposes. This is the threat, express or implied, of every contractual negotiation. (E.g.,”
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.