The flow caused by the pulling of a circular disk away from a plane rigid surface is investigated when the disk and the surface are separated by a thin layer of power-law fluid of thickness h(t). It is observed that the force exerted by the fluid on the disk is a suction force F, which tends to make the disk adhere to the rigid surface. The variation of F/k (where k is the power-law consistency index) with time t is computed for h(t) t+5.0 for both pseudoplastic (with power-law exponent n satisfying 0 < n < 1) and dilatant fluids (with n > 1). It is found that at a given instant, vertical bar F vertical bar/k for any pseudoplastic fluid is larger than that for a dilatant fluid. Further, the values of F for several realistic pseudoplastic fluids are computed at a given instant for both linear and quadratic variation of h(t) with t. The analysis further reveals that for a realistic pseudoplastic fluid, vertical bar F vertical bar at a given instant corresponding to a linear variation of h(t) is larger for a layer of given thickness than vertical bar F vertical bar at that instant for a layer of larger thickness.