Ballard v. Burton’s Empirical Analysis
444 F.3d 391 · 2006
Citation profile
64 federal appellate · 4 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 218 later decisions — most recently June 2025 · most notably Powers v. Hamilton County Public Defender Commission (2007), Bush v. Strain (2008)
64 federal appellate · 4 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))
Relies on Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H · Boykin v. Alabama · Graham v. Connor · North Carolina v. Alford · Heck v. Humphrey
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 218 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“An unpublished opinion issued after January 1, 1996 is not controlling precedent, but may be persuasive authority.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[W]hen a state prisoner seeks damages in a § 1983 suit, the district court must consider whether a judgment in favor of the plaintiff would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence; if it would, the complaint must be dismissed unless the plaintiff can demonstrate that the conviction or sentence has already been invalidated. But if the district court determines that the plaintiffs action, even if successful, will not demonstrate the invalidity of any outstanding criminal judgment against the plaintiff, the action should be allowed to proceed, in the absence of some other bar to the suit.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The “reasonableness” of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.... The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments-in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving-about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation. “An officer’s evil intentions will not make a Fourth Amendment violation out of an objectively reasonable use of force; nor will an officer’s good intentions make an objectively unreasonable use of force constitutional.””
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.