118 Ind. App. 358 - Patton v. Jacobs’s Empirical Analysis
1948
Citation profile
8 federal appellate · 43 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 60 later decisions — most recently October 2021 · most notably Norris v. Moskin Stores, Inc. (1961), 119 Ind. App. 643 - Continental Optical Co. v. Reed (1949)
8 federal appellate · 43 state decisions — followed in 15 states
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 State Ex Rel. Mavity v. Tyndall · Hinish v. Meier & Frank 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 60 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"* * * We think it sufficient to say that in most of the cases in which a recovery was permitted the actionable conduct of the creditor lay in the fact that he gave the general public information concerning a private matter in which it had, or could have, no legitimate interest, and did so in a manner that was coercive and oppressive. Frequently, except for the truth of the publication, the words and methods used would have given basis for a suit for libel or slander and carried to the public generally the inference that the complainant was a `dead beat,' habitually refused to pay his debts and was not entitled to financial credit. "We find none of these elements in the case before us. * * * It must be borne in mind that an employer has a natural and proper interest in the facts relative to debts owed by his employees. He is subject to the expense and inconvenience of defending himself in garnishee proceedings wherein a percentage of his employees' wages may be taken to apply on such debts and thus additional and burdensome bookkeeping entries may be imposed upon him. He has the right to hire only those who pay their debts and may take a pardonable pride in the reputation of his employees in that respect. He is not in a category with the general public which cannot have any legitimate interest in a purely private matter between a creditor and a debtor. For the reasons above stated an employer has a right to know the status of the financial obligations of his employees and, wh”
2 later decisions 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.