Owens v. Okure’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
559 federal appellate · 290 district · 145 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,341 later decisions (18 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Wallace v. Kato (2007), City of Monterey v. Del Monte Dunes at Monterey, Ltd. (1999)
559 federal appellate · 290 district · 145 state decisions — followed in 24 states
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.
Appellate journey
reviewedOkure v. Owens (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1292 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1988
Relies on Parratt v. Taylor · Monroe v. Pape · Wilson v. Garcia · Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, Inc. · Briscoe v. W
Cited together with Wilson v. Garcia · Board of Regents of Univ. of State of NY v. Tomanio · Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York · Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H
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 2,341 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“where state law provides multiple statutes of limitations for personal injury actions, courts considering § 1983 claims should borrow the general or residual statute for personal injury actions.”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“Some courts found analogies in common-law tort, others in contract law, and still others in statutory law. Often the result had less to do with the general nature of § 1983 relief than with counsel’s artful pleading .... Consequently, plaintiffs and defendants often had no idea whether a federal civil rights claim was barred until a court ruled on their case. Predictability, a primary goal of statutes of limitations, was thereby frustrated.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[c]ourts should resort to residual statutes of limitations only where state law provides multiple statutes of limitations for personal injury actions and the residual one embraces, either explicitly or by judicial construction, unspecified personal injury actions.”
6 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.