Clark v. Modern Group Ltd.’s Empirical Analysis
9 F.3d 321 · 1993
Citation profile
28 federal appellate · 12 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 108 later decisions — most recently May 2024 · most notably Hurley v. Atlantic City Police Department (1999), Ideal Dairy Farms, Inc. v. John Labatt, Ltd. (1996)
28 federal appellate · 12 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 26 U.S.C. § 274 · 26 U.S.C. § 6001 · 26 U.S.C. § 62 · 28 U.S.C. § 1291 · 28 U.S.C. § 1332 (Class Action Fairness Act of 2005) · 42 U.S.C. § 5846
Relies on Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H · Erie Co v. Tompkins · County of Los Angeles v. Chavez-Salido · Geary v. United States Steel 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 108 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“we must forecast the position the supreme court of the forum would take on the issue.” Clark v. Modern Group Ltd., 9 F.3d 321, 326 (3d Cir.1993). In developing this forecast,”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A]n at-will employee invoking Pennsylvania’s public policy exception must show his discharge offended a clear mandate of public policy by resulting from conduct on the part of the employee that is required by law or from the employee’s refusal to engage in conduct prohibited by law. The public policy exception has been most frequently applied under Pennsylvania law when the discharge is a result of the employee’s compliance with or refusal to violate the law. We see little evidence in the Pennsylvania cases to date that an alleged public interest will be recognized as a clear mandate of public policy in the absence of a legislative or constitutional endorsement in the form of a specific prohibition, requirement or privilege. Absent a violation of law, it is difficult for an at-will employee seeking recovery for wrongful discharge to point to a common law, legislative or constitutional principle from which a clear public policy exception to Pennsylvania’s doctrine of at-will employment could be inferred.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Under existing case law, we conclude that Pennsylvania will not allow recovery for wrongful discharge based only on a showing that an employer faced with ambiguous law was willing to engage in a course of conduct it wanted to pursue without regard to its legality. For all these reasons, we predict the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would not recognize a cause of action for wrongful discharge based either on an employee’s reasonable belief that the employer’s act is unlawful or an employer’s belief that the act the employee objects to is unlawful, unless the act proposed is in fact unlawful or the motive for the discharge is illegal invidious discrimination.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.