Walter v. Pike County’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 federal appellate · 3 district · 1 state decisions

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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[A] state actor’s failure to warn about the likelihood of a private act of violence-even a highly culpable failure to warn — cannot itself predicate liability. Rather, under the fourth element of a state-created danger claim, liability ... is predicated upon the state’s affirmative acts which work to the plaintiffs detriments in terms of exposure to danger, and we have never found a state-created danger claim to be meritorious without an allegation and subsequent showing that state authority was affirmatively exercised.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Caissie v. City of Cape May · 935 F. Supp. 2d 808 - Reichert v. Pathway School

2. “[W]here the circumstances require a state actor to make something less exigent than a “split-second” decision but more urgent than an “unhurried judgment,” i.e., a state actor is required to act “in a matter of hours or minutes,” a court must consider whether a defendant disregarded a “great risk of serious harm rather than a substantial risk.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Lichtenstein v. Lower Merion Sch. Dist. · 5 F. Supp. 3d 676 - Van Orden v. Borough of Woodstown

3. “While “the line between action and inaction may not always be clear,” here the Walters’ allegations about the period leading up to Stacy’s July, 2002 trial undoubtedly fall on the side of inaction. The Walters allege in their Amended Complaint that after Stacy began exhibiting threatening behavior, Mitchell, De-Sarro, and Jacobs made conscious decisions not to re-arrest Stacy, not to seek revocation of his bail, and not to warn Michael Walter or arrange protection for him, and that those decisions shock the conscience. We have squarely held that “failing to more expeditiously seek someone’s detention,” and failing to arrest someone who poses a threat, are not themselves affirmative uses of authority within the meaning of the state-created danger doctrine. Bright, 443 F.3d at 284 ; Burella v. City of Phila., 501 F.3d 134, 147 (3d Cir.2007). We have also held that a state actor’s assurance to a plaintiff that he had “nothing to worry about and that he [was] fine,” when in fact the plaintiff was quite ill and required emergency care, did not amount to an affirmative use of state authority because it did not restrain the plaintiff from acting on his own behalf to obtain private assistance. Ye v. United States, 484 F.3d 634 , 641 (3d Cir.2007); id. at 642 (“assurances of well-being are not ‘affirmative’ acts within the meaning of the fourth element of a state-created danger claim”). If a state-created danger claim cannot be predicated on a failure to arrest, neither can it be pred”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. 645 F. Supp. 2d 325 - Gardner v. Luzerne County