Wright v. City of Ozark’s Empirical Analysis
715 F.2d 1513 · 1983
Citation profile
17 federal appellate · 3 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 47 later decisions — most recently January 2017 · most notably Nishiyama v. Dickson County (1987), Cornelius v. Town of Highland Lake (1989)
17 federal appellate · 3 district · 4 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 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Conley v. Gibson · Snowden v. Hughes · Martinez v. California · Bowers v. DeVito · Thomas Byrd v. William P. Brishke
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 47 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“... the due process clause of the Constitution does not protect a member of the public at large from the criminal acts of a third person, even if the state was remiss in allowing the third person to be in a position in which he might cause harm to a member of the public, at least in the absence of a special relationship between the victim and the criminal or between the victim and the state.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“There is a constitutional right not to be murdered by a state officer, for the state violates the Fourteenth Amendment when its officer, acting under color of state law, deprives a person of life without due process of law. But there is no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the state fails to protect its residents against such predators but it does not violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or, we suppose, any other provision of the Constitution.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““[T]he due process clause of the Constitution provides no basis for imposing liability through the application of the civil rights statutes on state officers who either negligently or even recklessly facilitate the criminal actions of a third party, absent some special relationship between the victim and the criminal or between the victim and the state officer.””
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.