Ferdon v. Dickens’s Empirical Analysis
1909
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 54 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 59 later decisions — most recently February 2024 · most notably United States Steel Corp. v. Elton H. Darby, Defendant-Third Party v. Southern Fabricating Company, Inc., Third Party (1975), Johnson Publishing Co. v. Davis (1960)
2 federal appellate · 54 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 Wofford v. Meeks · Gaither v. Advertiser Co. · Iron Age Publishing Co. v. Crudup · Fuller v. Dean · Scott v. McKinnish
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 59 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The plea being fatally defective, in substance, as a plea in bar, and the matters and facts set out in such plea being available to the defendant under the general issue, in mitigation of damages only, and not in defense, it could have been stricken from the file, upon motion, without putting plaintiff to a demurrer. This being true, a very general demurrer would be sufficient. The palpable defect in the plea' was that the matters and facts alleged in the plea were availing only as evidence in mitigation of damages, and not in bar of the action. While this particular ground is not clearly and succinctly stated in the demurrer, yet we hold the demurrer sufficient to test this question.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage““Certainly such matters cannot constitute a defense or bar to an action of libel. It is therefore only necessary to determine whether or not the demurrer sufficiently challenges the defects of the plea. While many of the grounds alleged in the demurrer are insufficient and do not point out the defect or insufficiency in as definite language as might be employed, we think some of the grounds sufficiently certain to authorize — indeed, to impel— the court to sustain the demurrer to a plea so palpably insufficient as this.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage““In all actions of slander or libel, the truth of the words spoken or written, or the circumstances under which they were spoken or written, may be given in evidence under the general issue in mitigation of the damages.””
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.