State v. Nelson’s Empirical Analysis
2004
Citation profile
37 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 37 later decisions — most recently December 2025 · most notably State v. Seaman (2005), State v. Randy Graham (2007)
37 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 State v. Lovegren · Vitullo v. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 206 · Doting v. Trunk
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 37 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“First, as long as there are objective, specific and articulable facts from which an experienced officer would suspect that a citizen is in need of help or is in peril, then that officer has the right to stop and investigate. Second, if the citizen is in need of aid, then the officer may take appropriate action to render assistance or mitigate the peril. Third, once, however, the officer is assured that the citizen is not in peril or is no longer in need of assistance or that the peril has been mitigated, then any actions beyond that constitute a seizure implicating not only the protections provided by the Fourth Amendment, but more importantly, those greater guarantees afforded under Article II, Sections 10 and 11 of the Montana Constitution as interpreted in this Court’s decision.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Whether the District Court erred when it denied Grmoljez's motion to suppress.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Grmoljez
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.