Bleich v. Ortiz’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 12 district · 152 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 167 later decisions — most recently June 2023 · most notably Torosyan v. Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1995), Mather v. Griffin Hospital (1988)
3 federal appellate · 12 district · 152 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 Sestito v. City of Groton · Puro v. Henry · Charles Parker Co. v. Silver City Crystal Co. · Proto v. Bridgeport Herald Corporation · Console v. Nickou
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 167 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Whether a defamatory communication implicates an interest worthy of protection is a question of law for the trial court to determine, but whether the privilege is nevertheless defeated through its abuse is a question of fact to be decided by the jury.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage“[e]ven when a legitimate interest is at stake, a claim of conditional privilege is defeated if the defendant acts with malice in making the defamatory communication at issue. For purposes of our law of defamation, malice is not restricted to hatred, spite or ill will against a plaintiff, but includes any improper or unjustifiable motive.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage“For the defense of conditional privilege to attach, a defendant must assert an objective interest sufficiently compelling to warrant protection of an otherwise defamatory communication.”
6 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.