Ward v. Zelikovsky’s Empirical Analysis
1994
Citation profile
13 federal appellate · 20 district · 79 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 127 later decisions — most recently March 2023 · most notably Taylor v. Metzger (1998), Lee v. Bankers Trust Co. (1999)
13 federal appellate · 20 district · 79 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 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. · Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc. · Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co. · Finch v. Connor
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 127 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[The] legitimate purpose [of defamation law is] compensating individuals for injury to reputation. Requiring proof of harm would reduce defamation to this purpose. The actual injury rule would bring defamation into line with the rest of tort law, which does not purport to punish wrongdoing or regulate activity in the absence of injury. [Anderson, supra, 25 Wm. & Mary L.Rev. at 774.]”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[T]o evaluate a statement’s content, a court must consider the fail- and natural meaning that will be given to the statement by reasonable persons of ordinary intelligence. When considering verifiability, a court must determine whether the statement is one of fact or opinion. While a statement of opinion generally enjoys absolute immunity, a statement of fact is actionable [o]nly if the statement suggested specific factual assertions that could be proven true or false. Finally, to decide whether a statement is capable of a defamatory meaning, a court must consider the listener’s reasonable interpretation, which will be based in part on the context in which the statement appears. In general, words that subject a person to ridicule or contempt, or that clearly sound to the disreputation of an individual are defamatory on their face. [Ibid. (citations omitted) (second alteration in original).]”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“There are some statements that are in form statements of opinion, or even of fact, which cannot reasonably be understood to be meant literally and seriously and are obviously mere vituperation and abuse. A certain amount of vulgar name-calling is frequently resorted to by angry people without any real intent to make a defamatory assertion, and it is properly understood by reasonable listeners to amount to nothing more. This is true particularly when it is obvious that the speaker has lost his temper and is merely giving vent to insult. Thus when, in the course of an altercation, the defendant loudly and angrily calls the plaintiff a bastard in the presence of others, he is ordinarily not reasonably to be understood as asserting the fact that the plaintiff is of illegitimate birth but only to be abusing him to his face. No action for defamation will lie in this case.”
2 later decisions 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.