Pimentel v. Houk’s Empirical Analysis
1951
Citation profile
5 district · 33 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 40 later decisions — most recently August 1998 · most notably 41 Cal. 3d 782 - Coleman v. Gulf Insurance Group (1986), 68 Cal. 2d 336 - White Lighting Co. v. Wolfson (1968)
5 district · 33 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
Relies on Hauser v. Bartow · Tranchina v. Arcinas · Mullins v. Sanders · Finance Corp. v. . Lane · Ellis v. . Wellons
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 40 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“An ulterior motive or a bad intention in using the process is not alone sufficient, the bad intent must have culminated in the abuse, for it is the latter which is the gist of the action. An action for abuse of process cannot be maintained where the process was employed to perform no other function than that intended by law. Thus the mere issuance of process is not actionable as an abuse of process; there must be use of the process, and that use must of itself be without the scope of the process, and hence improper. Or stated another way, the test as to whether there is an abuse of process is whether the process has been used to accomplish some end which is without the regular purview of the process, or which compels the party against whom it is used to do some collateral thing which he could not legally and regularly be compelled to do.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“It is not alleged that said attachment covered property exempt from execution [see, e.g., Arc Investment Co. v. Tiffith, supra, fn. 6 , ante], that it covered an excessive amount of [plaintiff's] property, that the debt alleged to be owed by [plaintiff] was otherwise secured, or that [plaintiff] requested that the levy be made upon other property.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“there is no liability where the defendant has done nothing more than carry out the process to its authorized conclusion, even though with bad intentions.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.