Mason v. Stock’s Empirical Analysis
1994
Citation profile
8 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently December 2015
8 district · 2 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)) · 5 U.S.C. § 551 (Administrative Procedure Act of 1946) · 5 U.S.C. § 552 (Freedom of Information Act) · 5 U.S.C. § 552A (§ 3 of the Privacy Act of 1974)
Relies on Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York · Erie Co v. Tompkins · Hickman v. Taylor · United States v. Nixon · City of Oklahoma City v. Tuttle
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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“This case is a prime example of why it should be incumbent on the attorneys to make a good faith effort to resolve as much of this type of dispute as possible before resorting to the court. In this case, defendants are asking the court to comb through seven personnel files and seven internal affairs histories which defense counsel has characterized as “extensive and voluminous documents and materials.” There is no doubt that there will be material in at least the personnel files that plaintiffs may not need nor want. It is a great burden for the court, and consumes a great deal of the court’s time, to go through each of these files only to be looking at medical histories, emergency contact forms, payroll plans[,] etc. This is the type of review the attorneys should be conducting long before approaching the court. It is certainly not fair to the taxpayers of this country to have to pay the costs and expenditures of the federal courts for work that attorneys should be doing.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Smith v. Goord“the court must ... determine whether items in the personnel files and internal affairs file do not fall within the exceedingly broad scope of permissible discovery under Rule 26. This determination is made difficult by the court’s relative lack of familiarity with the case. This court is being asked to decide what information within a voluminous group of files is conceivably relevant to plaintiffs claims when the court is not sure what plaintiffs arguments and litigation strategies in support of his claims are going to be.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Smith v. Goord“It obviously would make no sense to permit state law to determine what evidence is discoverable in cases brought pursuant to federal statutes whose central purpose is to protect citizens from abuses of power by state or local authorities. If state law controlled, state authorities could effectively insulate themselves from constitutional norms simply by developing privilege doctrines that made it virtually impossible for plaintiffs to develop the kind of information they need to prosecute their federal claims.”
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.