Smith v. General Scanning, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
876 F.2d 1315 · 1989
Citation profile
33 federal appellate · 7 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 81 later decisions — most recently February 2018 · most notably Perkins v. Silverstein (1991), MacDonald v. Eastern Wyoming Mental Health Center (1991)
33 federal appellate · 7 district · 6 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 29 U.S.C. § 633 (§ 14 of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967)
Relies on McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green · United States Postal Service Board of Governors v. Aikens · Furnco Construction Corp. v. Waters · Octopi, Inc. v. Courtney · Puerto Rico Department of Consumer Affairs v. Isla Petroleum Corp.
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 81 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]e do “not sit as a super-personnel department that reexamines an entity’s business decisions.” ... “No matter how medieval a firm’s practices, no mat- , ter how high-handed its decisional process, no matter how mistaken the firm’s managers, [the ADEA does] not interfere.” ... Rather, our inquiry is limited to “whether the employer gave an honest explanation of its behavior.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“In trying to establish a basis that an employer's explanation was merely pretextual, an employee must 'focus on the specific reasons advanced by the defendant to support the discharge.'”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A] terminated plaintiff's ultimate burden in an age discrimination case is to prove that he was discharged because of his age.”
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.