Case Citator › Cotter v. Bowen

Cotter v. Bowen

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Abrogated
Court
Eighth Circuit
Citation
879 F.2d 359
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
96 of 96
Citing cases (total)
128
Treatment dates
2002
Abrogated
A reviewed court treats this case as abrogated by later authority. Cotter v. Bowen is abrogated in part: all 96 flagged citations have been read, with the one confirmed treatment listed below. Gisbrecht v. Barnhart displaced Cotter's lodestar-first method for determining attorney's fees under 42 U.S.C. § 406(b), while preserving reasonableness review of contingent fees.
More on how this was screened

The citing opinions uniformly reported Gisbrecht's higher-court act and often continued to apply Cotter's surviving deference and claimant-protection propositions; none inflicted a separate adverse treatment.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

128 later cases cite Cotter v. Bowen; 96 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Cotter v. Bowen?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Abrogated

  • The Supreme Court abrogated Cotter's lodestar-first methodology for Section 406(b) fees, holding that courts must start with a lawful contingent-fee agreement and independently test the resulting fee for reasonableness.

    Gisbrecht v. Barnhart · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    Cotter v. Bowen, 879 F. 2d 359 (CA8 1989); Hubbard v. Shalala, 12 F. 3d 946 (CA10 1993); and Kay v. Apfel, 176 F. 3d 1322 (CA11 1999) (all following, in accord with the Ninth Circuit, a lodestar method), with Wells v. Sullivan, 907 F. 2d 367 (CA2 1990); Rodriguez v. Bowen, 865 F. 2d 739 (CA6 1989) (en banc); and McGuire v. Sullivan, 873 F. 2d 974 (CA7 1989) (all giving effect to attorney-client contingent-fee agreement, if resulting fee is reasonable).9 We now reverse the Ninth Circuit’s judgment. ... Most plausibly read, we conclude, § 406(b) does not displace contingent-fee agreements as the primary means by which fees are set for successfully representing Social Security benefits claimants in court. Rather, § 406(b) calls for court review of such arrangements as an independent check, to assure that they yield reasonable results in particular cases.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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