Hepperle v. Johnston’s Empirical Analysis
590 F.2d 609 · 1979
Citation profile
30 federal appellate · 2 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 58 later decisions — most recently December 2025 · most notably Phillips v. Joint Legislative Committee on Performance & Expenditure Review (1981), Michael Byrne Debra Manov v. Camran Nezhat (2001)
30 federal appellate · 2 district · 2 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
Relies on Faretta v. California · Link v. Wabash Railroad · Kilcullen v. United States · Davis v. Board of School Commissioners · Flaksa v. Little River Marine Construction Co.
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 58 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Subsection (a) of the amended section 455 contains the general, or catch-all, provision that a judge shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which “his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” This sets up an objective standard, rather than the subjective standard set forth in the existing statute....”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“For failure of the plaintiff to prosecute or comply with these rules or any order of court, a defendant may move for dismissal of an action or of any claim against the defendant.”
1 later decision 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.