Wells v. Brown’s Empirical Analysis
891 F.2d 591 · 1989
Citation profile
157 federal appellate · 5 district · 9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 304 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2021 · most notably Hafer v. Melo (1991), Atchinson v. District of Columbia (1996)
157 federal appellate · 5 district · 9 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 Conley v. Gibson · Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Haines v. Kerner · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Will v. Michigan Department of State Police
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 304 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“clearly fail[ed] to comport with the requirement of Wells that a defendant be 'clearly notified of the potential for payment of damages individually.'”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage“set forth clearly in their pleading that they are suing the state defendants in their individual capacity for damages, not simply in their capacity as state officials.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage“[i]t is certainly reasonable to ask that all plaintiffs, even pro se plaintiffs, some of whom file several appeals each year with us, [to] alert party defendants that they may be individually responsible in damages.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Alexander · McCollum v. Garrett
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.