Lewellen v. Morley’s Empirical Analysis
875 F.2d 118 · 1989
Citation profile
33 federal appellate · 2 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 50 later decisions — most recently September 2008 · most notably Gray v. Lacke (1989), Doe v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield United (1997)
33 federal appellate · 2 district ·
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 28 U.S.C. § 1391 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1988
Relies on Wilson v. Garcia · Board of Regents of Univ. of State of NY v. Tomanio · Owens v. Okure · United States v. Indrelunas · Stafford v. Briggs
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 50 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In ... Lewellen v. Dwyer, filed February 27, 1987, Lewellen’s counsel attempted to serve the federal defendants by mailing the complaint under Fed.R.Civ.P. 4(c)(2)(C)(ii) to the Chicago office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. None of the defendants lives there. Unless the defendant returns • an acknowl-edgement within 20 days (none did), counsel must resort to regular service. Three months later counsel tried to serve a subpoena requiring someone from the DEA to appear for a deposition and disclose the addresses of the named defendants. This effort to obtain information — like any other deposition sooner than 30 days after service of process— required leave of court. Fed.R.Civ.P. 30(a). Leave was not forthcoming, because counsel from the Department of Justice appeared and told the judge that the Department had established a mechanism for obtaining addresses and other information without the need for depositions. 28 C.F.R. §§ 16.21-16.29 . (These regulations had been brought to the attention of Lewellen’s lawyer, first by phone and then by letter, before the hearing.) Lewellen’s lawyer disdained this method and did not try any other, such as requesting the marshal to serve the complaint. See Del Raine v. Carlson, 826 F.2d 698 , 705 (7th Cir.1987). He stood on his demand for a deposition until September 1987, but by then it was too late: the district court dismissed the action against the federal defendants on January 29, 1988, for failure to obtain service within 120 da”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“there is no deficiency of federal law on questions concerning the relation among filing, service, and the period of limitations,”
2 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.