Heintz v. Jenkins’s Empirical Analysis
1995
Citation profile
287 federal appellate · 199 district · 80 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,110 later decisions (12 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2025 · most notably Chickasaw Nation v. United States (2001), Jerman v. Carlisle, McNellie, Rini, Kramer & Ulrich, L.P.A. (2010)
287 federal appellate · 199 district · 80 state decisions — followed in 18 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
reviewedJenkins v. Heintz (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co. · Brown v. Gardner · Fox v. Citicorp Credit Services, Inc. · Jenkins v. Heintz
Cited together with Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H · Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly · Ashcroft v. Iqbal · Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corporation
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 1,110 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“any person who uses any instrumentality of interstate commerce or the mails in any business the principal purpose of which is the collection of any debts, or who regularly collects or attempts to collect, directly or indirectly, debts owed or due or asserted to be owed or due another.”
19 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“applies to attorneys who 'regularly' engage in consumer-debt-collection activity, even when that activity consists of litigation”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he fact that a lawsuit turns out ultimately to be unsuccessful”
14 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.