Mills v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1960
Citation profile
4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently June 2005
4 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 Yaselli v. Goff · Hoppe v. Klapperich · Gammel v. Ernst & Ernst · Brictson v. Woodrough · Pike v. Megoun
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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"* * * We think reason, justice and public policy demand that when a public officer is engaged in a quasi-judicial duty involving discretion, he be immune from liability for his acts, if they are within his jurisdiction, or lawful authority, regardless of his motive. As stated in Sanders State Bank v. Hawkins, Tex.Civ.App., 142 S.W. 84 , to hold him liable for discretionary acts in a `private action, it must appear that he transcended the limits of his power, but as long as he remains within the scope of his legal authority he is not liable, notwithstanding his motive; * * *'"”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Powell v. Seay
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.