Washington Post Co. v. Chaloner’s Empirical Analysis
250 U.S. 290 · 1919
Citation profile
117 federal appellate · 28 district · 57 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 226 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2019 · most notably Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974), Ollman v. Evans (1984)
117 federal appellate · 28 district · 57 state decisions — followed in 15 states
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.
Appellate journey
reviewedWashington Post Co. v. Chaloner (from District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Peck v. Tribune Co. · Pollard v. Lyon · Commercial Pub. Co. v. Smith · Culmer v. Canby
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 226 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A publication claimed to be defamatory must be read and construed in the sense in which the readers to whom it is addressed would ordinarily understand it.... When thus read, if its meaning is so unambiguous as to reasonably bear but one interpretation, it is for the judge to say whether that signification is defamatory or not. If, upon the other hand, it is capable of two meanings, one of which would be libelous and actionable and the other not, it is for the jury to say, under all the circumstances surrounding its publication, including extraneous facts admissible in evidence, which of the two meanings would be attributed to it by those to whom it is addressed or by whom it may be read.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage“much irrelevant and scandalous matter . . . unfit for our files,”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Wilson v. Wilson
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.