Williams v. Seniff’s Empirical Analysis
342 F.3d 774 · 2003
Citation profile
43 federal appellate · 1 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 110 later decisions — most recently July 2021 · most notably Kinney v. Weaver (2004), Spiegla v. Hull (2004)
43 federal appellate · 1 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 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1985 · 42 U.S.C. § 2000E (§ 701 of the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964)
Relies on Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H · McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green · Texas Department of Community Affairs v. Burdine · Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co. · St. Mary's Honor Center v. Hicks
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 110 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It does not follow, however, that Bar-tholet’s suit should have been dismissed under Rule 12(b)(6). The district judge believed that until Bartholet amended his pleadings to invoke ERISA, all he had was a claim arising under state common law, and as state law is preempted the complaint failed. The assumption implicit in this approach is that a complaint must plead law as well as fact. Why? ... Common law pleading required the advocate to match facts to a legal theory, the “form of action.” Code pleading ended up in much the same place, as courts read the code formula “facts constituting a cause of action” to require the pleader to state a legal theory.... “Cause of action” does not appear in the Rules of Civil Procedure, which uses “claim for relief’ to denote a rejection of both common law and code approaches and a new, latitudinarian approach.... A complaint under Rule 8 limns the claim; details of both fact and law come later, in other documents. Instead of asking whether the complaint points to the appropriate statute, a court should ask whether relief is possible under any set of facts that could be established consistent with the allegations.... A drafter who lacks a legal theory is likely to bungle the complaint (and the trial); you need a theory to decide which facts to allege and prove. But the complaint need not identify a legal theory, and specifying an incorrect theory is not fatal.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“(1) whether the speech would create problems in maintaining discipline or harmony among co-workers; (2) whether the employment relationship is one in which personal loyalty and confidence are necessary; (3) whether the speech impeded the employee’s ability to perform his responsibilities; (4) the time, place and manner of the speech; (5) the context in which the underlying dispute arose; (6) whether the matter was one on which debate was vital to informed decision making; and (7) whether the speaker should be regarded as a member of the general public.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“The same standards for proving intentional discrimination apply to Title VII and § 1983 equal protection claims.”); Humphries v. CBOCS West, Inc., 474 F.3d 387, 403-04 (7th Cir.2007) (collecting cases and explaining that the Seventh Circuit has generally”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.