Kassen v. Hatley’s Empirical Analysis
1994
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 195 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 201 later decisions — most recently May 2019 · most notably 792 So. 2d 392 - Ex Parte Cranman (2000), Dallas Cty. Mental Health and Mental Retardation v. Bossley (1998)
2 federal appellate · 195 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Texas Court of Appeals, 5th District (Dallas))
Relationships
Relies on Nixon v. Mr. Property Management Co. · Barr v. Matteo · Westfall v. Erwin · Liberty Mortgage Co. v. Frey · Montgomery v. Kennedy
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 201 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A ministerial act is one which a person performs in a given state of facts and in a prescribed manner in obedience to the method of legal authority, without regard to his own judgment on the propriety of the act being done. The distinction between ministerial and judicial and other official acts is that, where the law prescribes and defines the duty to be performed with such precision and certainty as to leave nothing to the exercise of discretion or judgment, the act is ministerial; but, where the act to be done involves the exercise of discretion or judgment in determining whether the duty exists, it is not to be deemed ministerial.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“1. the nature and importance of the function that the employee is performing, 2. the extent to which passing judgment on the exercise of discretion by the employee will amount to passing judgment on the conduct of a coordinate branch of government or an agency thereof, 3. the extent to which the imposition of liability would impair the employee’s free exercise of discretion, 4. the extent to which financial responsibility will fall on the employee, 5. the likelihood that harm will result to the public if the employee acts, 6. the nature and seriousness of the type of harm that may be produced, and 7. the availability to the injured party of other remedies and forms of relief.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[t]he public would suffer if government officers, who must exercise judgment and discretion in their jobs, were subject to civil lawsuits that second-guessed their decisions.”
6 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.