Ralston v. McGovern’s Empirical Analysis
167 F.3d 1160 · 1999
Citation profile
22 federal appellate · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 49 later decisions — most recently September 2022 · most notably McElligott v. Foley (1999), Greeno v. Daley (2005)
22 federal appellate · 3 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
Relies on Anderson v. Creighton · Estelle v. Gamble · Procunier v. Navarette · Westlake v. Lucas · Boretti v. Wiscomb
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 49 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[N]ot every refusal of medical treatment constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Medical “need” runs the gamut from a need for an immediate intervention to save the patient’s life to the desire for medical treatment of trivial discomforts and cosmetic imperfections that most people ignore. At the top of the range a deliberate refusal to treat is an obvious violation of the Eighth Amendment, and at the bottom of the range a deliberate refusal to treat is obviously not a violation. Where to draw the line between the end points is a question of judgment that does not lend itself to mechanical resolution. It is a matter of determining the civilized minimum of public concern for the health of prisoners, which depends on the particular circumstances of the individual prisoner.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Johnson v. Doughty“[n]ot only the general standard of liability under the Eighth Amendment for refusal to render medical treatment, but also the application of the standard to pain medication, are both unchanged since the events giving rise to this suit and reasonably clear and definite as applied to a case as extreme as this”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[T]he civilized minimum [of public concern for the health of prisoners] is a function both of objective need and of cost. The lower the cost, the less need has to be shown, but the need must still be shown to be substantial.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Hoffer v. Jones
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.