Sullivan v. W Sullivan’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

7 federal appellate · 1 district ·

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 40 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “attorney fees may not exceed $125.00 per hour unless the court determines that an increase in the cost of living or a special factor, such as the limited availability of qualified attorneys for the proceeding involved, justifies a higher fee.” 28 U.S.C. § 2412 (d)(2)(A). The Fourth Circuit has held that a general cost of living index, such as the United States Department of Labor's Consumer Price Index for all the urban consumers”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 586 F. Supp. 2d 491 - Makinson v. Astrue · 445 F. Supp. 2d 593 - Adams v. Barnhart

2. “Attorney fee awards are capped at $75 per hour under the terms of section 2412(d)(2)(A), “unless the court determines that an increase in the cost of living ... justifies a higher fee.” Congress neither defined “cost of living” nor specified an index or other data to be used in calculating increases in the cost of living. “Cost of living,” however, is a term with a commonly understood meaning. As commonly understood, the term means the costs of food, shelter, clothing, and other basic goods and services needed in everyday life. It is highly unlikely that Congress would have chosen this commonly used term, which is widely understood to be a composite of almost exclusively nonlegal costs, [citation omitted], had it intended to authorize adjustments to reflect increases in legal service costs in particular; if this had been its intent, it would have simply stated the $75 cap applies “unless the court determines that an increase in the cost of legal services ... justifies a higher fee.” ... The structure of section 2412(d)(2)(A) confirms that Congress intended for the term “cost of living” to assume its ordinary meaning. If an adjustment for increases in the cost of legal services were allowed, the exception for legal services to the general rule that fee awards should reflect “prevailing market rates” would be meaningless; attorney fees, like all other fees, would be awarded at the prevailing market rates.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Elcyzyn v. Brown · Harris v. Sullivan

3. “Beginning in the World War I era, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has published a series of indexes of consumer prices based upon its collection of data through various sampling techniques. Regular publication of a national index began in 1921, under the general title “Cost of Living”. In 1940, the name was changed to “Indexes of the Cost of Living of Wage-Earners and Lower-Salaried Workers in Large Cities”, and in 1945, the name was changed to “Consumer Price Index Moderate Income Families in Large Cities”. See B.L.S. Handbook of Methods, at p. 185. In 1978, the coverage was broadened to include all urban consumers, not just wage-earners. This CPI-U, or CPI-ALL as it is commonly referred to, takes into account the buying patterns of professional and salaried workers, part-time workers, the self-employed, the unemployed, and retired persons, as well as wage-earners and clerical workers, and reflects the purchasing habits of approximately 80% of the non-institutionalized population of the United States. See The Consumer Price Index: 1987 Revision, p. 1; B.L.S. Handbook of Methods, p. 154. At some risk of over-simplification, it can be stated that the CPI-ALL incorporates data covering several hundred categories of items, separated into 69 expenditure classes in 7 general categories of expenses: food and beverages, housing, apparel and upkeep; transportation, medical care, entertainment, and other goods and services. Beginning in 1986, the “other goods and services” category was”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Elcyzyn v. Brown