Case Citator › Boddie v. Connecticut

Boddie v. Connecticut

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
401 U.S. 371
Decided
Confirmed treatments
3
Flagged citations read
46 of 46
Citing cases (total)
46
Treatment dates
1973–1987
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. Boddie v. Connecticut remains authority for an indigent person's access to divorce court, while later courts have declined to extend its rule to certain other civil claims. All 46 flagged citations have been read.
More on how this was screened

The 3 confirmed treatments are listed below: two courts refused to apply Boddie to civil tort proceedings, and the Ninth Circuit questioned whether a presumption it drew from Boddie about hearings before deprivation survived a later Supreme Court decision.

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.

46 later cases cite Boddie v. Connecticut; 46 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 Boddie v. Connecticut?

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 court declined to extend Boddie's fee-waiver rule to a publicly funded transcript for an indigent defendant's civil tort appeal.

    Hodgdon v. Gallagher · Supreme Court of New Hampshire · filed

    Nor does Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371, 28 L. Ed. 2d 113, 91 S. Ct. 780 (1971), which excused an indigent from paying a filing fee in a divorce case, aid the defendant since one’s interest in a civil tort action does not rise to the same constitutional level as one’s inability to dissolve a marriage except through the courts.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

  • The court declined to extend Boddie's court-access protection to a malpractice suit against a charitable hospital.

    Ponder v. Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority · Supreme Court of Georgia · filed

    The cases of Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U. S. 371 (91 SC 780, 28 LE2d 113) (1971), and Little v. Streater, 452 U. S. 1 (101 SC 2202, 68 LE2d 627) (1981), relied upon by appellants to support their argument of a right to access to the civil courts, are distinguishable from the present case. Boddie v. Connecticut concerned access to the courts by indigent persons for the purpose of obtaining a divorce and was specifically limited to its facts.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

Questioned

  • The court questioned whether a presumption favoring a hearing before deprivation, attributed in part to Boddie, remained viable after Mitchell v. W. T. Grant Co.

    Geneva Towers Tenants Organization v. Federated Mortgage Investors · United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit · filed

    Although Mitchell v. W. T. Grant Co., 416 U.S. 600, 94 S.Ct. 1895, 40 L.Ed.2d 406 (1974), has perhaps cast doubt on the continued vitality of the “presumption” in cases like Bell v. Burson, 402 U.S. 535, 542, 91 S.Ct. 1586 (1971) and Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. at 378-379, 91 S.Ct. 780, in favor of pre-action notice and opportunity for hearing,17 the balancing process in this case leads nonetheless to the pre-deprivation result.18
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

Does this case still carry your argument?

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