Wommack v. Lesh’s Empirical Analysis
1957
Citation profile
2 district · 14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently June 1985
2 district · 14 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 Jeakins v. City of El Dorado · Hibbs v. City of Wichita · Peters v. City of Lindsborg · Kretchmar v. City of Atchison · Smith v. Higgins
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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““There can be no doubt but that the maintenance and operation of a police department by a municipality is a governmental function as distinguished from proprietary, thus clothing the municipality with immunity for acts of negligence or misfeasance of its employees engaged in the carrying out of such function. It is also a general rule that with respect to governmental functions a municipal officer performing duties strictly public is not liable for negligent acts of misfeasance of persons employed by the municipality who are under his general direction and authority, the rule being based on the ground that the doctrine of respondeat superior does not apply under such circumstances. (37 Am. Jur., Municipal Corporations, § 265, p. 888.) Entirely aside from the fact the petition is utterly devoid of facts connecting the chief of police, the city manager, the mayor and city commissioners with the incident in question, no authority has been cited, and we know of none, which would, under the allegations of this petition, impose liability on those officials for the action of the arresting police officer. (Citing cases.) . . .” (p. 550.)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Gardner v. McDowell
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.