27 Ohio App. 3d 51 - Adams v. Epperly’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently May 2025
17 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 Pointer v. Texas · In re Oliver · Cooke v. United States · Brown v. Executive 200, Inc. · Kirby v. United States
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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'character and purpose of the punishment. * * * Punishment is remedial or coercive and for the benefit of the complainant in civil contempt. Prison sentences are conditional. The contemnor is said to carry the keys of his prison in his own pocket, * * * since he will be freed if he agrees to do as ordered. Criminal contempt, on the other hand, is usually characterized by an unconditional prison sentence. Such imprisonment operates not as a remedy coercive in its nature but as a punishment for the completed act of disobedience, and to vindicate the authority of the law and the court. * * * Therefore, to determine if the sanctions in [a cause] were criminal or civil in nature, it is necessary to determine the purpose behind each sanction: was it to coerce the appellees to obey the [court order], or was it to punish them for past violations?'”
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.