Chaves v. Johnson’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
50 federal appellate · 15 district · 207 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 417 later decisions — most recently August 2019 · most notably CaterCorp, Inc. v. Catering Concepts, Inc. (1993), Scott v. News-Herald (1986)
50 federal appellate · 15 district · 207 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 Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. · Chaplinsky v. State of New Hampshire · Time, Inc. v. Firestone · Cumberland Glass Manufacturing Co. v. De Witt & Co. · Rinaldi v. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc.
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 417 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) the existence of a valid contractual relationship or business expectancy; (2) knowledge of the relationship or expectancy on the part of the interferor; (3) intentional interference inducing or causing a breach or termination of the relationship or expectancy; and (4) resultant damage to the party whose relationship or expectancy has been disrupted.”
33 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“The tort complained of here is an intentional wrong to the property rights of another, accomplished by words, not defamatory in themselves, but employed in pursuance of a scheme designed wrongfully to enrich the speaker at the expense of the victim. The law provides a remedy in such cases, and the constitutional guarantees of free speech afford no more protection to the speaker than they do to any other tortfeasor who employes words to commit a criminal or a civil wrong.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“One who intentionally and improperly interferes with the performance of a contract (except a contract to marry) between another and a third person by inducing or otherwise causing the third person not to perform the contract, is subject to liability to the other for the pecuniary loss resulting to the other from the failure of the third person to perform the contract.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.