Branch v. G. Bernd Co.’s Empirical Analysis
955 F.2d 1574 · 1992
Citation profile
35 federal appellate · 9 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 95 later decisions — most recently June 2025 · most notably Burke v. Kodak Retirement Income Plan (2003), Gaskell v. Harvard Cooperative Society Gaskell
35 federal appellate · 9 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
Relies on American Manufacturers Mutual Insurance v. United States · American Pipe & Construction Co. v. Utah · Holmberg v. Armbrecht · Burnett v. New York Central Railroad · City of El Centro v. United States
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 95 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]o prevent an employer from enforcing the terms of a plan that are inconsistent with those of the plan summary, a beneficiary must prove reliance on the summary.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage“[a]lthough in the instant case, the appellee relied to his detriment... existing precedent does not dictate that a claimant who has been misled by summary descriptions must prove detrimental reliance. Congress has promulgated clear directives prohibiting misleading summary descriptions. This court elects not to undermine the legislative command by imposing technical requirements upon the employee.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Branch contends that we should not require reliance on a summary that omits or fails to provide information because such an omission can never inspire reliance and denies the beneficiary of information necessary to make a decision. But a beneficiary who receives a summary that omits the plan’s limit on the election period could prove reliance with evidence that the beneficiary received and read the summary and failed to make a timely election based on the belief that there was no time limit. It is thus irrelevant in this case whether the summary misrepresented or omitted the election period.”
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.