Rhoades v. Norfolk & Western Railway Co.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that an attorney’s lien was invalid because notice of the lien was served on the adverse party after the attorney was discharged
• explaining that a client’s right to discharge its attorney at will is justified by “the special relationship between attorney and client”
• finding that the law firm could not perfect a statutory lien where the client discharged the firm four days before the firm served its lien notice and, as a result, “there was no longer an underlying attorney-client relationship”
• rejecting former rule that a discharged attorney is entitled to contract fees if the discharge was without cause and holding that quantum meruit recovery is the proper remedy
• agreeing with \[o]ther jurisdictions . . . that an attorney discharged without cause is not entitled to recover contract fees from his former client but is limited to reasonable fees for services rendered\ (emphasis added)
• lien attaches from and after the time of service of notice required by the statute

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).