106 N.C. App. 496 - Lenzer v. Flaherty’s Empirical Analysis
1992
Citation profile
80 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 113 later decisions — most recently December 2020 · most notably 110 N.C. App. 422 - Slade v. Vernon (1993), Carl v. Children's Hospital (1997)
80 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1985
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Anderson v. Creighton · Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle · Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois · Connick v. Myers
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 113 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In challenging an adverse employment decision for violation of constitutional rights, an employee establishes a prima facie case by showing that [the] protected activity was a substantial or motivating factor in the employer's decision. This prima facie showing shifts the burden to the employer to show, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the adverse decision would-have been made in the absence of the protected activity.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“Although the definition of "public policy" approved by this Court does not include a laundry list of what is or is not "injurious to the public or against the public good," at the very least public policy is violated when an employee is fired in contravention of express policy declarations contained in the North Carolina General Statutes.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“a [public] official will be personally answerable for damages under section 1983 only where qualified immunity is not available to shield the official from liability for deprivation of federal rights.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.