Biggs v. Meadows’s Empirical Analysis
66 F.3d 56 · 1995
Citation profile
26 federal appellate · 11 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 86 later decisions — most recently February 2025 · most notably Okwa v. Harper (2000), State v. Nieto (2000)
26 federal appellate · 11 district · 7 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. § 1343 · 28 U.S.C. § 1915 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Estelle v. Gamble · Hishon v. King & Spalding · Kentucky v. Graham · Will v. Michigan Department of State Police · Leatherman v. Tarrant County Narcotics Intelligence and Coordination Unit
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 86 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]hen a plaintiff does not allege capacity specifically, the court must examine the nature of the plaintiff's claims, the relief sought, and the course of proceedings to determine whether a state official is being sued in a personal capacity.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage“when a plaintiff fails to allege capacity,”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“declined to resolve[ ] a split among the federal circuit courts on the appropriate way to treat a complaint that fails to state explicitly the capacity in which a defendant is sued under § 1983.”
2 later decisions 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.