Thomas Byrd v. William P. Brishke’s Empirical Analysis
466 F.2d 6 · 1972
Citation profile
88 federal appellate · 19 district · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 199 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2025 · most notably Rizzo v. Goode (1976), Gutierrez-Rodriguez v. Cartagena (1989)
88 federal appellate · 19 district · 5 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 28 U.S.C. § 1331 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Monroe v. Pape · Continental Ore Company v. Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation · Jones v. Illinois ex rel. Electoral Board · Whirl v. Kern · Delk v. St. Louis & San Francisco 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 199 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We believe it is clear that one who is given the badge of authority of a police officer may not ignore the duty imposed by his office and fail to stop other officers who summarily punish a third person in his presence or otherwise within his knowledge. That responsibility obviously obtains when the nonfeasor is a supervisory officer to whose direction misfeasor officers are committed. So, too, the same responsibility must exist as to nonsupervisory officers who are present at the scene of such summary punishment, for to hold otherwise would be to insulate nonsupervisory officers from liability for reasonably foreseeable consequences of the neglect of their duty to enforce the laws and preserve the peace.”
22 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“is responsible if his omission is unreasonable in light of the circumstances.”
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.