Fernandez v. Leonard’s Empirical Analysis
784 F.2d 1209 · 1986
Citation profile
40 federal appellate · 18 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 73 later decisions — most recently February 2020 · most notably De Abadia v. Izquierdo Mora (1986), Horta v. Sullivan (1993)
40 federal appellate · 18 district · 1 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. § 1291 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Mitchell v. Forsyth · United States v. Diebold, Inc. · United States v. Mendenhall · Daniels v. Williams
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 73 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[Gjovernment officials performing discretionary functions generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known ... If the law at that time was not clearly established, an official could not ... fairly be said to “know” that the law forbade conduct not previously identified as unlawful ... If the law was clearly established, the immunity defense should ordinarily fail, since a reasonably competent public official should know the law governing his conduct.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The public interest in deterrence of unlawful conduct and in the compensation of victims remains protected by a test that focuses on the objective legal reasonableness of an official’s acts. Where an official could be expected to know that certain conduct would violate statutory or constitutional rights he should be made to hesitate and a person who suffers injury caused by such action may have a cause of action.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“so excessive and brutal that it 'shocks the conscience'”
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.