29 Cal. 3d 682 - People v. Meredith’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 121 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 140 later decisions — most recently January 2018 · most notably 53 Cal. 3d 771 - People v. Cooper (1991), 30 Cal. 3d 43 - People v. Collie (1981)
3 federal appellate · 121 state decisions — followed in 13 states
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 Fisher v. United States · 19 Cal. 3d 99 - People v. James · 18 Cal. 3d 873 - People v. Miller · City & County of San Francisco v. Superior Court · 28 Cal. 3d 143 - People v. Hall
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 140 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““When defense counsel alters or removes physical evidence, he necessarily deprives the prosecution of the opportunity to observe that evidence in its original condition or location. [T]o bar admission of testimony concerning the original condition and location of the evidence in such a case permits the defense in effect to ‘destroy’ critical information; it is as if ... the wallet in this case bore a tag bearing the words ‘located in the trash can by [the accused’s] residence,’ and the defense, by taking the wallet, destroyed this tag. To extend the attorney-client privilege to a case in which the defense removed evidence might encourage defense counsel to race the police to seize critical evidence.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[W]henever defense counsel removes or alters evidence, the statutory privilege does not bar revelation of the original location or condition of the evidence in question. We thus view the defense decision to remove evidence as a tactical choice. If defense counsel leaves the evidence where he discovers it, his observations derived from privileged communications are insulated from revelation. If, however, counsel chooses to remove evidence to examine or test it, the original location and condition of that evidence loses the protection of the privilege.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Rubin v. State““In offering the evidence, the prosecution should present the information in a manner which avoids revealing the content of attorney-client communications or the original source of the information. In the present case, for example, the prosecutor simply asked Frick where he found the wallet; he did not identify Frick as a defense investigator or trace the discovery of the wallet to an attorney-client communication.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Rubin v. State
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.