Tornay v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
840 F.2d 1424 · 1988
Citation profile
52 federal appellate · 6 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 96 later decisions — most recently February 2025 · most notably United States v. Ritchie (1994), United States v. Gray (1989)
52 federal appellate · 6 district · 7 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 18 U.S.C. § 1963 (§ 901 of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) · 21 U.S.C. § 848 (§ 408 of the Controlled Substances Act) · 26 U.S.C. § 7601 · 26 U.S.C. § 7609
Relies on Kirby v. Illinois · Vandygriff v. Phillips · Fisher v. United States · Hannahville Indian Community v. United States · United States v. Powell
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 96 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“tantamount to [the revelation of] a confidential professional communication.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The principle of Baird was not that the privilege applied because the identity of the client was incriminating, but because in the circumstances of the case disclosure of the identity of the client was in substance a disclosure of the confidential communication in the professional relationship between the client and the attorney.... “[T]he authorities are clear that the privilege extends essentially only to the substance of matters communicated to an attorney in professional confidence. Thus the identity of a client, or the fact that a given individual has become a client are matters which an attorney normally may not refuse to disclose, even though the fact of having retained counsel may be used as evidence against the client.... To be sure, there may be circumstances under which the identification of a client may amount to prejudicial disclosure of a confidential communication, as where the substance of a disclosure has already been revealed but not its source.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Denial of a petition to quash an IRS summons is reviewed under the clearly erroneous standard.”
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.