David v. Cohen’s Empirical Analysis
407 F.2d 1268 · 1969
Citation profile
41 federal appellate · 6 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 60 later decisions — most recently December 1990 · most notably Melvin Carter v. John R. Carlson (1971), Sami v. United States (1979)
41 federal appellate · 6 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 26 U.S.C. § 6331 · 26 U.S.C. § 7802
Relies on Barr v. Matteo · Spalding v. Vilas · Gregoire v. Biddle · In re Disbarment of Gately · Albrecht v. Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad
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 60 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The test of whether a challenged action is ministerial or non-ministerial is not the office pre se or its height, but whether the function itself was of such discretionary nature that the threat of litigation would impede the official to whom it was assigned.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It does indeed go without saying that an official, who is in fact guilty of using his powers to vent his spleen upon others, or for any other personal motive not connected with the public good, should not escape liability for the injuries he may so cause; and, if it were possible in practice to confine such complaints to the guilty, it would be monstrous to deny recovery. The justification for doing so is that it is impossible to know whether the claim is well founded until the case has been tried, and that to submit all officials, the innocent as well as the guilty, to the burden of a trial and to the inevitable danger of its outcome, would dampen the ardor of all but the most resolute, or the most irresponsible, in the unflinching discharge of their duties. Again and again the public interest calls for action which may turn out to be founded on a mistake, in the face of which an official may later find himself hard put to it to satisfy a jury of his good faith. There must indeed be means of punishing public officers who have been truant to their duties; but that is quite another matter from exposing such as have been honestly mistaken to suit by anyone who has suffered from their efforts. As is so often the case, the answer must be found in a balance between the evils inevitable in either alternative. In this instance it has been thought in the end better to leave un-redressed the wrongs done by dishonest officers than to subject those who try to do their duty to the const”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Konigsberg v. Hunter
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.