Dickens v. Puryear’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
24 federal appellate · 8 district · 412 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 575 later decisions — most recently January 2026 · most notably 85 N.C. App. 669 - Harris v. NCNB National Bank of North Carolina (1987), Twyman v. Twyman (1993)
24 federal appellate · 8 district · 412 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 Kessing v. National Mortgage Corporation · Stanback v. Stanback · Caldwell v. Deese · Page v. Sloan · Sims v. Gardner
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 575 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) extreme and outrageous conduct, (2) which is intended to cause and does cause (3) severe emotional distress to another.”
18 later decisions quote this exact passage“need not present all the evidence available in his favor but only that necessary to rebut the defendant's showing that an essential element of his claim is non-existent or that he cannot surmount an affirmative defense.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage“if an affirmative defense required to be raised by a responsive pleading is sought to be raised for the first time in a motion for summary judgment, the motion must ordinarily refer expressly to the affirmative defense relied upon. Only in exceptional circumstances where the party opposing the motion has not been surprised and has had full opportunity to argue and present evidence will movant’s failure expressly to refer to the affirmative defense not be a bar to its consideration on summary judgment.”
4 later decisions 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.