Mitchell v. Flynn’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently March 2012
10 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 Maggio v. Zeitz · United States v. Rylander · Barrett v. Barrett · Winter v. Crowley · Stair v. Meissel
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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“An essential element of civil contempt is the defendant’s ability to comply with the court’s order. When the allegedly violated order itself contains an implicit finding of ability to comply at the time the order issued[sie], there arises a presumption that the defendant is also presently able to comply and the plaintiff makes his prima facie case of contempt of court by establishing that the defendant has failed to comply with a valid court order. Upon such a showing the defendant has the burden of production, of going forward with evidence of his inability to comply. The burden of persuasion, however, remains with the plaintiff.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Ames v. Ames · Zink v. Zink
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.