170 W. Va. 151 - Powers v. Goodwin’s Empirical Analysis
1982
Citation profile
30 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions — most recently March 2016 · most notably 192 W. Va. 435 - State Ex Rel. R.L. v. Bedell (1994), 178 W. Va. 53 - Maynard v. Board of Educ. of Wayne County (1987)
30 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))
Relies on Scheuer v. Rhodes · Wood v. Strickland · 148 W. Va. 398 - State Ex Rel. County Court of Marion County v. Demus · 157 W. Va. 100 - State Ex Rel. Brotherton v. Blankenship · 168 W. Va. 745 - State Ex Rel. Miller v. Smith
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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The rules governing whether a public official is entitled to indemnification for attorneys’ fees are the same in both the civil and criminal context. In order to justify indemnification from public funds the underlying action must arise from the discharge of an official duty in which the government has an interest; the officer must have acted in good faith; and the agency seeking to indemnify the officer must have either the express or implied power to do so.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage“... the voters have a legitimate interest in protecting their duly elected officials from being hectored out of office through the constant charge of bankrupting attorneys’ fees on their own personal resources. One of the obligations of a duly elected public official is to continue to discharge the office to which he was elected since it can reasonably be assumed that he was elected because of his public stand on issues of concern to the voters. Consequently, continued service in an elected position is not a question in which only the officeholder has a personal concern; in a democratic government predicated upon the competition of policies and ideas through different candidates for elected office, the public itself has an interest in seeing persons elected by a majority continue in office. [70 [sic] W.Va.] at 161, 291 S.E.2d at 476 .”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[W]e can envisage situations where a criminal prosecution does, indeed, arise directly from the good faith discharge of official duties.... While the number of criminal prosecutions emanating directly from the discharge of official duties is small, they are not necessarily nonexistent. In this regard, we can at least envisage-prosecutions against police officers for the use of excessive force and proceedings in criminal contempt against local officials who are accused of failing to follow either state or federal court orders. It would appear, of course, that conviction of a common law or statutory crime is conclusive proof that the official was not acting in good faith and was outside the scope of his official duties.”
1 later decision 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.