Smith v. Evans’s Empirical Analysis
853 F.2d 155 · 1988
Citation profile
65 federal appellate · 14 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 163 later decisions — most recently February 2018 · most notably Van Skiver v. United States (1991), Burns v. Morton (1998)
65 federal appellate · 14 district · 3 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 Browder v. Director Department of Corrections of Illinois · Houston v. Lack · Griggs v. Provident Consumer Discount Co. · Bender v. Williamsport Area School District · Thompson v. Immigration and Naturalization Service
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 163 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“when Smith put his motion in the envelope (even before he gave it to prison authorities to mail) his motion was untimely.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“legal error, without more, cannot justify granting a Rule 60(b) motion.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“we [could not] conclude that prison delay in transmitting Smith's motion contributed to the lateness of the motion.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.