Sillars v. Collier’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 3 district · 36 state decisions

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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is one of the infelicities of public life that a public officer is thus exposed to critical, and often to unjust, comments; but these, unless they pass the bounds of what the law will tolerate, must be borne for the sake of maintaining free speech. In the various cases which have been cited to us, or which have come under our observation, where under such circumstances actions have been maintained, the words have been considered to contain a charge of positive misconduct. Such, for instance, were Wilson v. Noonan, 23 Wis. 105 , Powers v. Dubois, 17 Wend. 63 , and Littlejohn v. Greeley, 13 Abb. Pr. 41 . But where the words spoken have simply amounted to the opinion of the speaker, however strongly expressed, as to the disposition of the public officer, the actions have been held not to be maintainable. Onslow v. Horne, 3 Wils. 177; Hogg v. Dorrah, 2 Port. (Ala.) 212.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Vinson v. O'Malley