Rroctor v. Richardson’s Empirical Analysis
1837
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently July 1954
1 federal appellate · 7 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.
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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Now, when a suit is commenced like the present, defendant should do one of two things, — either deny that he said so, which would amount to a waiver of title, or admit the accusation, and aver Ills readiness to bring suit. In the first alternative the courts would proceed to try the fact whether he liad defamed the title or not, and give damages accordingly; In the second, they would order suit to he commenced. This, it appears to me, is ihe regular course. The object of tliis law was intended to protect possession; to give it the same advantages when disturbed by slander as by actual intrusion; to force the defamer to bring suit, and throw the burden on him of proving what he asserted. If this course had been pursued here, the defendant Heerman directed to bring suit, in the language of the law, to prove what he said, and tlie plaintiff yelying on it, possession would have been maintained in it nniil a better right was shown. Instead df doing this, he has chosen to maintain the truth of what he lias advanced by stating thereafter the title in his answer, and averring it to be a better one than the plaintiff’s. Having done so. I think the court can examine it as well in ihat answer as if set forth in the petition. It is only, in fact, anticipating the order which the court must have given, and coming forward at once with that title which the court would have directed him to produce in another suit His adopting this course at his own choice cannot change the mode in which the”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.