Hein v. Lacy’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 6 district · 38 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 48 later decisions — most recently January 2019 · most notably Turner v. Halliburton Co. (1986), Rinsley v. Brandt (1983)
2 federal appellate · 6 district · 38 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 · Coleman v. MacLennan · Bowen v. Westerhaus · Bradford v. Mahan · Stice v. Beacon Newspaper Corporation
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 48 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Proof of actual malice in defamation actions when a conditional privilege is found to exist requires a plaintiff to prove that the publication was made with knowledge that the defamatory statement was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“It is not necessary to establish the literal truth of the precise statement made. Slight inaccuracies of expression are immaterial provided that the defamatory charge is true in substance.”
1 later decision 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.