Littlefield v. Caton’s Empirical Analysis
856 F.2d 344 · 1988
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 5 district · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently April 2017
6 federal appellate · 5 district · 5 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
Relies on Local 408, International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. National Labor Relations Board · Weatherford v. Bursey · Great Northern Ry Co v. Sunburst Oil & Refining Co · Morrison v. Olson · Lemon v. Kurtzman
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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]e have made clear that misdirection of this sort must 'involve[ ] prejudice and harm beyond frustrated expectations' to be constitutionally redressable. The mere passage of time — even, as here, the passage of many years — does not per se import the existence of such prejudice and harm. Something more — something specific, some concrete injury — must be shown.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“It is a fact of life, unlikely soon to be altered, that new laws are often not challenged and finally interpreted until a number of years go by. [[Image here]] We would be most reluctant to hold that the due process clause of the Constitution took away from the State of Rhode Island the power to consider and apply its laws correctly in this situation. Only in rare circumstances have courts allowed the misconstructions of officials to stop the proper execution of state or federal law, and such cases have involved prejudice and harm beyond frustrated expectations.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Aue v. Diesslin“no worse off than ... had the error not been made.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Beliles v. State
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.