Kemezy v. Peters’s Empirical Analysis
79 F.3d 33 · 1996
Citation profile
29 federal appellate · 5 district · 9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 76 later decisions — most recently January 2025 · most notably Cooper v. Casey (1996), Calhoun v. Detella (2003)
29 federal appellate · 5 district · 9 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 Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. · Smith v. Wade · City of Newport v. Fact Concerts, Inc. · Memphis Community School District v. Stachura · 54 Cal. 3d 105 - Adams v. Murakami
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 76 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The reprehensibility of a person's conduct is not mitigated by his not being a rich person, and plaintiffs are never required to apologize for seeking damages that if awarded will precipitate the defendant into bankruptcy.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“As Judge Posner recently noted: The defendant should not be allowed to plead poverty if his employer or an insurance company is going to pick up the tab---- It is bad enough that insurance or other indemnification reduces the financial incentive to avoid wrongdoing — -which is why insuring against criminal liability is prohibited. It would be worse if the cost of insurance fell, reducing the financial disincentive to engage in wrongful behavior, because the insurance company knew that its insured could plead poverty to the jury-”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“noted the inappropriateness of allowing the defendant to plead poverty if he will be indemnified ... to underscore the anomaly of requiring plaintiffs seeking punitive damages always to put in evidence of the defendant’s net worth. When the defendant is to be fully indemnified, [net worth] evidence, far from being required, is inadmissible. Thus, in some eases it is inadmissible, but in no cases is it required.”
1 later decision 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.