Case Citator › Norman R. Spears v. O.L. McCotter Director, Texas Department of Corrections

Norman R. Spears v. O.L. McCotter Director, Texas Department of Corrections

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

Abrogated
Court
Fifth Circuit
Citation
766 F.2d 179
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
117 of 117
Citing cases (total)
837
Treatment dates
1989
Abrogated
A reviewed court treats this case as abrogated by later authority. Norman R. Spears v. O.L. McCotter is abrogated in part after review of all 117 flagged citations, with the one confirmed treatment listed below.
More on how this was screened

Neitzke v. Williams rejected Spears's statement that failure to state a claim under Rule 12(b)(6) and frivolousness under former 28 U.S.C. § 1915(d) use the same legal-sufficiency standard. Spears's separate authorization of evidentiary hearings to develop a pro se prisoner's allegations remains widely applied. The later citing opinions either used that unaffected procedure, rejected case-specific challenges to a Spears hearing, or merely reported Neitzke's intervening act.

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.

837 later cases cite Norman R. Spears v. O.L. McCotter Director, Texas Department of Corrections; 117 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 Norman R. Spears v. O.L. McCotter Director, Texas Department of Corrections?

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Treatments

Abrogated

  • The Supreme Court abrogated Spears's statement equating Rule 12(b)(6) failure-to-state review with former § 1915(d) frivolousness review, holding that the two standards serve distinct purposes and that failure to state a claim does not automatically make a complaint frivolous.

    Neitzke v. Williams · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    The question presented is whether a complaint filed in forma pauperis which fails to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) is automatically frivolous within the meaning of 28 U. S. C. § 1915(d). The answer, we hold, is no. ... We therefore hold that a complaint filed informa pauperis is not automatically frivolous within the meaning of § 1915(d) because it fails to state a claim. ... Compare Brandon v. District of Columbia Board of Parole, 236 U. S. App. D. C. 155, 159, 734 F. 2d 56, 59 (1984), cert. denied, 469 U. S. 1127 (1985), with Harris v. Menendez, 817 F. 2d 737, 740 (CA11 1987); Spears v. McCotter, 766 F. 2d 179, 182 (CA5 1985); Franklin, supra, at 1227; Malone v. Colyer, 710 F. 2d 258, 261 (CA6 1983).
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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