Townsend v. Sears, Roebuck & Co.’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently December 2001
1 federal appellate · 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
Relies on 385 So. 2d 207 - State v. Edsall · 400 So. 2d 889 - State v. Hudgins · 370 So. 2d 179 - Brown v. Hartford Ins. Co. · 336 So. 2d 344 - Thompson v. LeBlanc · Mapes v. National Food Stores of Louisiana, Inc.
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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"A. (1) A peace officer, merchant, or a specifically authorized employee or agent of a merchant, may use reasonable force to detain a person for questioning on the merchant's premises, for a length of time, not to exceed sixty minutes, when he has reasonable cause to believe that the person has committed a theft of goods held for sale by the merchant, regardless of the actual value of the goods. The merchant or his employee or agent may also detain such a person for arrest by a peace officer. The detention shall not constitute an arrest."”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“(1) The person effecting the detention must be a peace officer, a merchant or a specially authorized employee of a merchant; (2) The party making the detention must have reasonable cause to believe that the detained person has committed theft; (3) Unreasonable force not be used in detaining the suspect for interrogation; (4) The detention must occur on the merchant’s premises; and (5) The detention may not last longer than sixty minutes.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“'Reasonable cause' under article 215 is not synonymous with probable cause, when a detention [by a merchant], rather than an arrest [by a peace officer] is involved.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.