Johnson v. Breeden’s Empirical Analysis
280 F.3d 1308 · 2002
Citation profile
32 federal appellate · 6 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 104 later decisions — most recently January 2024 · most notably Skrtich v. Thornton (2002), Boxer X v. Harris (2006)
32 federal appellate · 6 district · 3 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
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 3626 (§ 20409 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994) · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1988 · 42 U.S.C. § 1997E
Relies on Graham v. Connor · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Bell v. Wolfish · Duncan v. Walker · SAUCIER v. KATZ Et Al.
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 104 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Where it is not evident from the allegations of the complaint alone that the defendants are entitled to qualified immunity, the case will, proceed to the summary judgment stage, the most typical juncture at which defendants entitled to qualified immunity are released from the threat of liability, and the burden of further litigation. Even'at the summary judgment stage, not all defendants entitled to the protection of the qualified immunity defense will get it. The ones who should be given that protection at the summary judgment stage are those who establish that there is no genuine issue of material fact preventing them from being entitled to qualified immunity. And that will include defendants in a case where there is some dispute about the facts, but even viewing the evidence most favorably to the plaintiff the law applicable to that set of facts was not already clearly enough settled to make the defendants’ conduct clearly unlawful. But if, the evidence at the summary judgment stage, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, shows there are facts that are inconsistent with qualified immunity being granted, the case and the qualified immunity issue along with it will proceed to trial.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the failure to give requested jury interrogatories may not be error, or [the] error may be harmless, where the jury verdict itself, viewed in the light of the jury instructions, and any interrogatories that were answered by the jury, indicate without doubt what the answers to the refused interrogatories would have been, or make the answers to the refused interrogatories irrelevant to the qualified immunity defense.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“a defense of qualified immunity is not available in cases alleging excessive force in violation of the Eighth Amendment, because the use of force maliciously and sadistically to cause harm is clearly established to be a violation of the Constitution”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.