Pounders v. Watson’s Empirical Analysis
1997
Citation profile
21 federal appellate · 65 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 102 later decisions — most recently February 2026 · most notably Mezibov v. Allen (2005), 60 Cal. App. 4th 352 - Trans-Action Commercial Investors, Ltd. v. Firmaterr, Inc. (1997)
21 federal appellate · 65 state decisions — followed in 15 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
reviewedthe decision below (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Sacher v. United States · United States v. Wilson · In the Matter of Criminal Contempt of Thomas C McConnell
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 102 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Summary punishment of contempt is concededly an exception to the requirements of Due Process. Necessity dictates the departure. Necessity must bound its limits. In this case the course of events to the very end of the trial shows that summary measures were not necessary to enable the trial to go on. Departure from established judicial practice, which makes it unfitting for a judge who is personally involved to sit in his own case, was therefore unwarranted. ... This, then, was not a situation in which, even though a judge was personally involved as the target of the contemptuous conduct, peremptory action against contemnor was necessary to maintain order and to salvage the proceedings. Where such action is necessary for the decorous continuance of a pending trial, disposition by another judge of a charge of contempt is impracticable. Interruption for a hearing before a separate judge would disrupt the trial and thus achieve the illicit purpose of a contemnor.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.