Wood v. Breier’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 12 district · 13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 65 later decisions — most recently December 2015 · most notably Cassesso v. Commissioner of Correction (1983), Frankenhauser v. Rizzo (1973)
4 federal appellate · 12 district · 13 state decisions
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.
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1291 · 28 U.S.C. § 1292 · 28 U.S.C. § 1343 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Monroe v. Pape · Roviaro v. United States · United States v. Procter & Gamble Co. · Jencks v. United States · United States v. Reynolds
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 65 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In the real world, . . . [the police department’s] arguments may be of some substance. That [the police department’s] arguments may have merit, however, is not enough; rather, they must be so meritorious as to overcome the fundamental importance of a law meant to insure each citizen from unconstitutional state action and of the federal rules of discovery meant to insure that no relevant fact remain hidden. What merit [the police department’s] arguments have, they clearly lose in the balance. The danger of doing harm to the Milwaukee Police Department by allowing discovery of this file is not nearly so great as the harm that would surely result to the efficacy of our entire legal structure, including the Milwaukee Police Department, if a case such as this were won because the truth was hidden.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“All the material in the file is of a factual as opposed to a policy discussion nature, and nowhere in the file are there any recommendations made for future action or criticisms of past actions.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“the addition of possible civil sanctions to criminal and departmental ones would end candor or result in refusal to make reports.”
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.