Case Citator › Kotteakos v. United States

Kotteakos v. United States

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Limited by some courts
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
328 U.S. 750
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
318 of 318
Citing cases (total)
7,838
Treatment dates
1988
Limited by some courts
At least one reviewed court has limited this case’s holding to narrower facts or a narrower rule. No reviewed court has overruled it. Kotteakos v. United States remains controlling in criminal cases, but the Tenth Circuit declined to extend its harmless-error standard to an ordinary civil case. All 318 flagged citations have been read.
More on how this was screened

The one confirmed limited treatment is listed below. The seven opinions previously unavailable have since been retrieved; they applied Kotteakos or rejected arguments based on it without changing its rule.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

7,838 later cases cite Kotteakos v. United States; 318 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Kotteakos v. United States?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Limited

  • The Tenth Circuit declined to apply Kotteakos's criminal harmless-error standard to an ordinary civil case and instead used a more-probable-than-not test.

    U.S. Industries, Inc. v. Touche Ross & Co. · Tenth Circuit · filed

    Aetna Casualty and Sur. Co. v. Gosdin, 803 F.2d 1153, 1159 (11th Cir.1986) ("[I]n civil cases courts should apply the same standard as announced in Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946), a criminal case."). We believe, however, at least in the context of the present case, that the correct standard to apply is the "more probable than not" standard.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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