Nelson v. Spalding County’s Empirical Analysis
1982
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 46 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 55 later decisions — most recently October 2021 · most notably Gilbert v. Richardson (1994), Merrow v. Hawkins (1996)
3 federal appellate · 46 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 Hennessy v. Webb · Miree v. United States · Crowder v. Department of State Parks · Sheley v. BOARD OF PUBLIC EDUCATION FOR THE CITY OF SAVANNAH AND THE COUNTY OF CHATHAM · Robeson v. International Indemnity Co.
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 55 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[Employee's] duty in regard to stop signs is merely to replace those that are missing or to erect new signs where others determine it is necessary. The act of replacing and repairing signs is ministerial and not discretionary in its nature. Once [the employee] is notified that a sign is missing his duty is to replace it; this duty does not involve the exercise of a discretion on his part.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“is left to [their] personal judgment and is therefore discretionary and not ministerial. Although a public official is liable for damages to those injured by his omissions in performing ministerial duties, he is only liable for errors in the exercise of discretionary duties if his acts are wilful, malicious, or corrupt. [Cit.] While the adoption of more efficient procedures may be beneficial, we do not believe that [the county employees’] failure to implement different procedures amounts to such wilfulness or corruption of office. . . . [Their] decisions in adopting procedures should not be considered in determining [their] liability.”
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.