Gray ex rel. Alexander v. Bostic’s Empirical Analysis
613 F.3d 1035 · 2010
Citation profile
8 federal appellate · 2 state decisions
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1988
Relies on Hensley v. Eckerhart · Farrar v. Hobby · City of Riverside v. Rivera · Missouri v. Jenkins Ex Rel. Agyei · Norman v. Housing Authority of Montgomery
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 25 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(e) Remand for Further Proceedings. When a reversal on . appeal, in whole or in part, results in a remand to the district court for trial or other further proceedings (e.g., reversal of order granting summary judgment, or denying a new trial), a party who may be eligible for attorney’s fee’s on appeal after prevailing on the merits upon remand may, in lieu of filing an application for attorney’s fees in this court, request attorney’s fees for the appeal in a timely application filed with the district court upon disposition of the matter on remand.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“The district court, in deciding that an award of fees and expenses was warranted notwithstanding the nominal amount of damages, relied on the fact that the one published opinion to have come out of this litigation, our decision in Gray II [Gray ex rel. Alexander v. Bostic, 458 F.3d 1295 , 1300 (11th Cir.2006)]; see also id. at 1301 , had been “cited in more than fifty other cases” during the two years between its issuance on August 7, 2006 and the district court’s order awarding fees on July 29, 2008. In measuring “the significance of the legal issue on which the plaintiff prevailed” or “the public purpose served,” Farrar, 506 U.S. at 121-22 , 113 S.Ct. at 578-79 (O’Connor, J., concurring), by totaling up the number of times that our Gray II decision had been cited, the district court misapplied the law and overstated the impact of that decision. During the two-year period considered by the district court, our decision in Gray II had been cited, by our count, in sixty-four decisions, which is certainly “more than fifty other cases.” But only two of those sixty four decisions cited Gray II for the point of substantive law that this plaintiff prevailed on. See Moretta v. Abbott, 280 Fed.Appx. 823 , 825 (11th Cir.2008) (unpublished) (citing Gray II in support of proposition that the unlawfulness of tasering a six-year-old who was passively standing in the corner of elementary school principal’s office “was readily apparent to an official in the shoes of these officers”); T.S. v.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“issue [was] whether the district court abused its discretion under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 by awarding Gray attorney's fees even though the jury awarded her only $1.00 in nominal damages for Bostic's violation of her Fourth Amendment right to be free from illegal seizure.”
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.