Smith v. Cochran’s Empirical Analysis
339 F.3d 1205 · 2003
Citation profile
16 federal appellate · 11 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 56 later decisions — most recently February 2025 · most notably Pierce v. Gilchrist (2004), Serna v. Colorado Department of Corrections (2006)
16 federal appellate · 11 district ·
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 28 U.S.C. § 1291 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Duncan v. Walker · SAUCIER v. KATZ Et Al. · West v. Atkins
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 56 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Because of the underlying purposes of qualified immunity, we review summary judgment orders deciding qualified immunity decisions differently from other summary judgment decisions. After a defendant asserts a qualified immunity defense, the burden shifts to the plaintiff, and the plaintiff must first establish that the defendant’s actions violated a constitutional or statutory right. If a favorable view of the facts alleged show[s] the violation of a constitutional right, the next, sequential step is to ask whether the right was clearly established at the time of the defendant’s unlawful conduct. When the plaintiff fails to satisfy either part of this two-part inquiry, the court must grant the defendant qualified immunity.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he subjective element of an excessive force claim turns on whether force was applied in a good faith effort to maintain or restore discipline or maliciously and sadistically for the very purpose of causing harm.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Ordinarily, an excessive force claim involves two prongs: (1) an objective prong that asks if the alleged wrongdoing was objectively harmful enough to establish a constitutional violation, and (2) a subjective prong under which the plaintiff must show that the officials act[ed] with a sufficiently culpable state of mind.”
1 later decision 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.