Fitz v. Dolyak’s Empirical Analysis
712 F.2d 330 · 1983
Citation profile
11 federal appellate · 4 district · 10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 29 later decisions — most recently August 2021 · most notably 36 Cal. 3d 359 - American Bank & Trust Co. v. Community Hospital (1984), Rich v. Secretary of Army (1984)
11 federal appellate · 4 district · 10 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 McGowan v. State of Maryland Gallagher · Shapiro v. Thompson · Personnel Administrator of Mass. v. Feeney · Massachusetts Board of Retirement v. Murgia · Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia
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 29 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“9. Malpractice. Those founded on injuries to the person or wrongful death against any physician and surgeon ... arising out of patient care, within two years after the date on which the claimant knew, or through the use of reasonable diligence should have known, or received notice in writing of the existence of, the injury or death for which damages are sought in the action, whichever of the dates occurs first, but in no event shall any action be brought more than six years after the date on which occurred the act or omission or occurrence alleged in the action to have been the cause of the injury or death unless a foreign object unintentionally left in the body caused the injury or death.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Koppes v. Pearson“[W]e find that a distinction between foreign object cases and other malpractice cases could rationally be found to further this legislative purpose. In contrast to the propriety of a diagnosis or adequacy of treatment, the presence or absence of foreign objects inadvertently left in the body may be easily verified after the passage of time. That the distinction drawn by the legislature is not sufficiently broad or that a classification operates harshly in a particular case is not grounds for a finding that it is unconstitutional.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Hawley v. Green“As the majority of courts have held, legislation regulating medical malpractice litigation involves neither a suspect classification, nor a fundamental right so the strict scrutiny standard is inappropriate.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Koppes v. Pearson
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.