Venegas v. Mitchell’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
171 federal appellate · 86 district · 64 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 588 later decisions (6 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2023 · most notably City of Burlington v. Dague (1992), Gisbrecht v. Barnhart (2002)
171 federal appellate · 86 district · 64 state decisions — followed in 16 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
reviewedVenegas v. Skaggs (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1988
Relies on Blum v. Stenson · Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air · City of Riverside v. Rivera · Blanchard v. Bergeron · Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air
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 588 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“controls what the losing defendant must pay, not what the prevailing plaintiff must pay his lawyer.”
21 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[i]n any ... civil action under this section ... the court ... in its discretion ... may allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney's fee and costs.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“just as we have recognized that it is the party's entitlement to receive the fees in the appropriate case, so have we recognized that as far as [42 U.S.C. § 1988] is concerned, it is the party's right to waive, settle, or negotiate that eligibility.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.