Kerr v. United States Dist. Court for Northern Dist. of Cal.
- Decided
- June 14, 1976
- Docket
- 74-1023
- Status
- Published
- Jurisdiction
- Federal
Cited 2,854 timesNo negative treatment found in this library
What later courts said
- recognizing that “[t]he remedy of mandamus is a drastic one, to be invoked only in extraordinary situations” — Danilov v. Aguirre (2005)
- holding that when the state is a litigant in a federal civil rights action, state laws 19 restricting access to information do not apply — Kitaj v. Van Handel (2025)
- recognizing that, in order to ensure "the writ will issue only in extraordinary circumstances, . . . the party seeking issuance of the writ [must] have no other adequate means to attain the relief" sought — In Re Daniel Braxton (2001)
Each line is a later court’s own words about this case, not a summary. Read the opinion before relying on it.
How the opinion begins
Mr. Justice Marshall delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioners, defendants in a class action, sought issuance of writs of mandamus from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to compel the District Court to vacate two discovery orders. The Court of Appeals refused to issue the writs. We hold that in the circumstances of this case — and particularly in light of [*396] the availability of an alternative, less extreme, path to modification of the challenged discovery orders — issuance of the writ is inappropriate. We therefore affirm.
I
Statutes cited
- 28 U.S.C. § 1651
- 28 U.S.C. § 2281
- 28 U.S.C. § 1292
Cite this
Kerr v. United States Dist. Court for Northern Dist. of Cal., 426 U.S. 394 (1976)Read the full opinion
Reading the library on this site uses your account’s daily calls, the same as the connector and the API. The Free plan needs no card. Calls a day on each plan.