Lee v. Ferraro’s Empirical Analysis
284 F.3d 1188 · 2002
Citation profile
165 federal appellate · 4 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 623 later decisions — most recently June 2025 · most notably Vinyard v. Wilson (2002), Holloman ex rel. Holloman v. Harland (2004)
165 federal appellate · 4 district · 7 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 Terry v. Ohio · Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Anderson v. Creighton · Graham v. Connor · Duncan v. Walker
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 623 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[q]ualified immunity offers complete protection for government officials sued in their individual capacities as long as their conduct violates no clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”
47 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Probable cause exists 'when the facts and circumstances within the officer's knowledge, of which he or she has reasonably trustworthy information, would cause a prudent person to believe, under the circumstances shown, that the suspect has committed, is committing, or is about to commit an offense.'”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(1) the severity of the crime; (2) whether the individual poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others; (3) whether the individual actively resists or tries to evade arrest by flight; (4) -the need for force to be applied; (5) the amount of force applied in fight of the nature of the need; (6) the severity of the injury; and (7) whether officers applied force in good faith or rather did so maliciously and sadistically-”
10 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.