Smith v. Freland’s Empirical Analysis
954 F.2d 343 · 1992
Citation profile
64 federal appellate · 5 district · 9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 158 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2023 · most notably Brosseau v. Haugen (2004), Dickerson v. Mcclellan (1996)
64 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
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H · United Mine Workers of America v. Gibbs · Graham v. Connor · Bell v. Wolfish · Tennessee v. Garner
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 158 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]e must avoid substituting our personal notions of proper police procedure for the instantaneous decision of the officer at the scene. We must never allow the theoretical, sanitized world of our imagination to replace the dangerous and complex world that policemen face every day. What constitutes “reasonable” action may seem quite different to someone facing a possible assailant than to someone analyzing the question at leisure.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split second judgments--in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving--about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“had proven he would do almost anything to avoid capture”
4 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.