Johnson v. Sawyer’s Empirical Analysis
980 F.2d 1490 · 1992
Citation profile
19 federal appellate · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 32 later decisions — most recently January 2019 · most notably Johnson v. Sawyer (1997), Johnson v. Sawyer (1995)
19 federal appellate · 1 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 18 U.S.C. § 1905 · 26 U.S.C. § 6103 · 26 U.S.C. § 7201 · 26 U.S.C. § 7217 · 26 U.S.C. § 7431 · 28 U.S.C. § 1291 · 28 U.S.C. § 1346 (Federal Tort Claims Act) · 28 U.S.C. § 2674
Relies on Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics · Pullman-Standard v. Swint · Brown v. General Services Administration · Nixon v. Mr. Property Management Co. · United States v. S.A. Empresa De Viacao Aerea Rio Grandense
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 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] plea agreement in a criminal case is not a contract in the civil sense. A breach of a plea agreement may affect such criminal matters as sentencing, withdrawal of a plea, sentencing appeals, and the like; but the breach of a plea agreement never generates civil remedies such as monetary damages or specific performance.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Just because the discretionary function exception would generally shield the government from FTCA liability otherwise arising from [a] policy decision, it does not follow that the government is automatically shielded from such liability when the acts of the particular agents seeking to implement that policy violate another federal law, regulation, or express policy. Actions taken to carry out a discretionary policy must be taken with sufficient caution to ensure that, at a minimum, some other federal law is not violated in the process.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"The government mischaracterizes both Johnson's cause of action and the basis for the district court’s judgment. Neither relied on breach of the plea agreement.... [T]he IRS was not even a party to the plea agreement between the Department of Justice [actually, the United States Attorney] and Johnson, and thus had no privity with Johnson. Without privity there can be no breach of contract. Moreover, Johnson never asserted that the government was liable to him because the IRS violated his agreement with the Department of Justice. To the contrary, Johnson has consistently asserted that the government’s liability results from violation of its duty toward him as established by § 6103.” Johnson, 980 F.2d at 1501 (footnote omitted).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Johnson v. Sawyer
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.