Spears v. Ol McCotter’s Empirical Analysis
766 F.2d 179 · 1985
Citation profile
104 federal appellate · 1 district · 8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 399 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2025 · most notably Neitzke v. Williams (1989), Varnado v. Lynaugh (1991)
104 federal appellate · 1 district · 8 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. § 1915 · 28 U.S.C. § 636 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Anders v. California · Watson v. Ault · Irving v. Thigpen · Ford v. Wj Estelle
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 399 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“satisfied that the action is frivolous or malicious.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Almost a decade ago Judge Bell of this court addressed the "difficult task facing the courts of winnow[ing] out the wheat from the unusual amount of chaff necessarily presented in a system which fosters pro se litigation." Watson v. Ault, 525 F.2d at 890. In the intervening years the task has become more unmanageable, our winnowing fans are seemingly impotent when applied to the mountains of chaff before us... . [C]ourts should use with greater frequency the device of referring prisoners' cases to magistrates... . [L]imited judicial resources might then be utilized more timely and more efficaciously to resolve those cases in which relief should be granted.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“inappropriate to refer [a] case to a magistrate for a trial over the prisoner’s objections, [a] trial court may refer the case to a magistrate to dig beneath the conclusional allegations; to reduce the level of abstraction upon which the claims rest; to ascertain exactly what scenario the prisoner claims occurred, as well as the legal basis for the claim.”
3 later decisions 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.