11 Wash. App. 21 - Fite v. Lee’s Empirical Analysis
1974
Citation profile
2 district · 48 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 56 later decisions — most recently July 2023 · most notably 103 Wash. 2d 800 - Sea-Pac Co. v. United Food & Commercial Workers Local Union 44 (1985), 28 Wash. App. 737 - Batten v. Abrams (1981)
2 district · 48 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 Hoppe v. Klapperich · 34 Ill. App. 2d 456 - Ammons v. Jet Credit Sales, Inc. · Farmers Gin Company v. Ward · 18 Wash. 2d 839 - Ryan v. Plath · 51 Wash. 2d 89 - Washington Asphalt Co. v. Harold Kaeser Co.
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 56 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'[T]he mere institution of a legal proceeding even with a malicious motive does not constitute an abuse of process.'”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage“"Were we to agree that dismissal with prejudice of the client who is without knowledge that her attorney has issued the process on her behalf, is res judicata of the claim against the attorney, we would be required to make two assumptions of doubtful validity: (1) that the attorney-client relationship is an ordinary agency relationship, and (2) that when an attorney does an unlawful act on behalf of his client without the client's knowledge or consent he has implied authority from the client to do so. We cannot accept such assumptions. "An attorney in discharging his professional duties acts in a dual capacity. In a limited or restricted sense he is an agent of his client. But he has powers, including those to issue judicial process, far superior to those of an ordinary agent. "As an officer of the court, his duties are both private and public. Where the duties to his client to afford zealous representation conflict with his duties as an officer of the court to further the administration of justice, the private duty must yield to the public duty. He therefore occupies what might be termed a `quasi-judicial office.' Langen v. Borkowski, 188 Wis. 277, 301 , 206 N.W. 181, 190 (1925), 43 A.L.R. 622 (1926); Hoppe v. Klapperich, 224 Minn. 224 , 28 N.W.2d 780 (1947); CPE 32. "By its very nature, an abuse of legal process by an attorney as defined above-violates an attorney's oath, his canons of ethics, and his duty to the public as an officer of the court.... "Accordingly, the scope”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“[T]he gist of the tort is not commencing an action or causing process to issue without justification, but misusing, or misapplying process justified in itself for an end other than that which it was designed to accomplish. The purpose for which the process is used, once it is issued, is the only thing of importance. . . . The essential elements of abuse of process, as the tort has developed, have been stated to be: first, an ulterior purpose, and second, a wilful act in the use of the process not proper in the regular conduct of the proceeding. Some definite act or . . . objective not legitimate in the use of the process, is required; and 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. The improper purpose usually takes the form of coercion to obtain a collateral advantage, not properly involved in the proceeding itself, such as the surrender of property or the payment of money, by the use of the process as a threat or a club. There is, in other words, a form of extortion, and it is what is done in the course of negotiation, rather than the issuance or any formal use of the process itself, which constitutes the tort. The cases have involved such extortion by means of attachment, execution, garnishment, or sequestration proceedings, or arrest of the person, or criminal prosecution, or even such infrequent cases as the use of a subpoena for the collection of a debt. The ult”
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.