Messina v. Burden’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 254 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 303 later decisions — most recently June 2017 · most notably Fox v. Deese (1987), Tomlin v. McKenzie (1996)
5 federal appellate · 254 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 James v. Jane · The Siren · First Virginia Bank-Colonial v. Baker · Lawhorne v. Harlan · Kellam v. School Board
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 303 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) the nature of the function performed by the employee; (2) the extent of the state’s interest and involvement in the function; (3) the degree of control and direction exercised by the state over the employee; and (4) whether the act complained of involved the use of judgment and discretion.”
20 later decisions quote this exact passage“protecting the public purse, providing for smooth operation of government, eliminating public inconvenience and danger that might spring from officials being fearful to act, assuring that citizens will be willing to take public jobs, and preventing citizens from improperly influencing the conduct of governmental affairs through the threat or use of vexatious litigation.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Lentz v. Morris · Brown v. Cuffee“[T]he doctrine of sovereign immunity is `alive and well' in Virginia.”
7 later decisions 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.