Kay v. Ehrler’s Empirical Analysis
1991
Citation profile
155 federal appellate · 105 district · 145 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 753 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Buckhannon Board and Care Home Incs v. West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (2001), McNeil v. United States (1993)
155 federal appellate · 105 district · 145 state decisions — followed in 25 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
reviewedKay v. Ehrler (from Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Perry v. Louisiana · Connolly v. Burt · Falcone v. Internal Revenue Service · Falcone v. Internal Revenue Service
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 753 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“to enable potential plaintiffs to obtain the assistance of competent counsel in vindicating their rights.”
64 later decisions quote this exact passage“the effective prosecution of meritorious claims.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage“[A]n organization is not comparable to a pro se litigant because the organization is always represented by counsel, whether in-house or pro bono, and thus, there is always an attorney-client relationship.”
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.