Smith v. Nelson’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently May 2020
2 federal appellate · 12 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 Baldwin v. Wingfield · Baxley v. Laster · Lewis v. Burdine
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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) a legal procedure set in motion in proper form, even with probable cause, and even with ultimate success, but, (2) perverted to accomplish an ulterior purpose for which it was not designed, and (3) a wilful act in the use of process not proper in the regular conduct of the proceeding.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“The test of process abuse is not whether the process was originally issued with malice and without probable cause. The remedy in that situation would be an action for malicious prosecution.... Here we have no abuse or coercive act subsequent to the issuance of the warrant.”
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.