Littrell v. Franklin’s Empirical Analysis
388 F.3d 578 · 2004
Citation profile
45 federal appellate · 12 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 90 later decisions — most recently April 2025 · most notably Brown v. City of Golden Valley (2009), Curley v. Klem (2007)
45 federal appellate · 12 district · 2 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
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · United States v. Olano · Anderson v. Creighton · Graham v. Connor · Mitchell v. Forsyth
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 90 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has explained: The issue of qualified immunity ... is frequently intertwined with unresolved factual questions. Where, as in this case, factual questions prevent a district court from ruling on the issue of qualified immunity, it is appropriate to tailor special interrogatories specific to the facts of the case. This practice allows the jury to make any requisite factual findings that the district court may then rely upon to make its own qualified immunity ruling.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he law of our circuit is clear ... [that] qualified immunity is a question of law for the court, rather than the jury, to decide”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The district court properly submitted the issue of excessive force to the jury, and the jury found that Officer Franklin violated Ms. Littrell’s constitutional right to be free from excessive force. See Foster v. Metro. Airports Comm’n, 914 F.2d 1076, 1081 (8th Cir.1990) (“The question for the jury is whether, judging from the perspective of a reasonable officer at the scene of the arrest, the totality of the circumstances justifies the use of the force used.”); see also, Billingsley v. City of Omaha, 277 F.3d 990 , 995-97 (8th Cir.2002) (approving the submission of Eighth Circuit Model Jury Instruction (Civil) 4.10 for jury determination of an excessive force claim under the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness standard); Goff v. Bise, 173 F.3d 1068 , 1073-74 (8th Cir.1999) (affirming a district court’s denial of an officer’s motion for judgment as a matter of law on the issue of excessive force where the evidence was sufficient to create a jury question as to whether the officer used an objectively unreasonable amount of force); Jackson v. Crews, 873 F.2d 1105, 1107-08 (8th Cir.1989) (rejecting an officer/defendant’s challenge to excessive force instructions following a jury determination that the officer/defendant used excessive force).”
2 later decisions 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.