May v. Sheahan’s Empirical Analysis
226 F.3d 876 · 2000
Citation profile
16 federal appellate · 3 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 53 later decisions — most recently October 2025 · most notably Green Leaf Nursery v. Ei Dupont De Nemours and Company (2003), Townsend v. Vallas (2001)
16 federal appellate · 3 district · 1 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 Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Anderson v. Creighton · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Bell v. Wolfish · Hudson v. Palmer
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 53 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“appear excessive in relation to the purpose they allegedly serve.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“If these subsequent amended complaints have, in fact, superseded May’s original amended complaint, the present appeal would be moot because there would no longer be a live dispute over whether Sheahan is entitled to qualified immunity based on the allegations in the Amended Complaint.”). . See also ComputerEase Software, Inc. v. Hemisphere Corp., 2007 WL 852103 , (S.D.Ohio Mar. 19, 2007) (”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“the contours of a right asserted must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he or she is doing violates that right. See Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635 , 640 (1987); May, 226 F.3d at 881. 29 As a general rule, a”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Townsend v. Vallas
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.