common fund exception
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 386 U.S. 714 - Fleischmann Distilling Corp. v. Maier Brewing Co. · 1967Most cited · 1,813 citing opinions
That exception had previously been applied in cases where a plaintiff traced or created a common fund for the benefit of others as well as himself. ... to have allowed the others to obtain full benefit from the plaintiff's efforts without requiring contribution or charging the common fund for attorney's fees would have been to enrich the others unjustly at the expense of the plaintiff.
How often courts cite the case defining “common fund exception”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “common fund exception” — 1,801 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.