Cooper v. Casey’s Empirical Analysis
97 F.3d 914 · 1996
Citation profile
60 federal appellate · 2 district · 8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 136 later decisions — most recently January 2025 · most notably United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. W&O, Inc. (2000), Gutierrez v. Peters (1997)
60 federal appellate · 2 district · 8 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)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1988
Relies on Estelle v. Gamble · Farmer v. Brennan · Landgraf v. USI Film Products · Liteky et al United States · Hudson v. McMillian
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 136 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A prison’s medical staff that refuses to dispense bromides for the sniffles or minor aches and pains or a tiny scratch or a mild headache or minor fatigue— the sorts of ailments for which many people who are not in prison do not seek medical attention — does not by its refusal violate the Constitution.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“[a] mechanical ratio, such as two to one or three to one or four to one or even ten to one, would not make good sense. The smaller the compensatory damages, the higher the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages has to be in order to fulfill the objectives of awarding punitive damages.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Suppose the best lawyer in the United States charges $1,000 an horn- and is worth every cent of it. Only his practice has nothing to do with civil rights; he is, let us say, an antitrust trial lawyer. He is requested to represent an indigent civil rights plaintiff, and he does so, giving the case his best shot and, despite his inexperience in civil rights litigation, doing a superb job. Would he be entitled to an award of fees at the rate of $1,000 an hour? Not if the judge could have procured competent counsel for the plaintiff at a much lower rate. It is no more reasonable to pay a lawyer $1,000 an hour for services that could be obtained at $200 an hour than it is to pay $1,000 for a hood ornament that you could buy elsewhere for $200. Judges have to be careful when they are spending other people’s money.”
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.