Renwick v. News & Observer Publishing Co.’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 134 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 172 later decisions — most recently March 2026 · most notably Welling v. Weinfeld (2007), Van Buskirk Mdl v. Cable News Network Inc (2002)
3 federal appellate · 134 state decisions — followed in 14 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.
Relationships
Relies on Harris v. McRae · Weyerhaeuser Co. v. Lyman Lamb Co. · Goodrich v. Waterbury Republican-American, Inc. · Dodrill v. Arkansas Democrat Co. · Froelich v. Adair
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 172 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““[o]ne who intentionally intrudes, physically or otherwise, upon the solitude or seclusion of another or his private affairs or concerns, is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy, if the intrusion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“Given the First Amendment limitations placed upon defamation actions by [New York Times v.] Sullivan and upon false light invasion of privacy actions by [ Time, Inc. v.] Hill , we think that such additional remedies as we might be required to make available to plaintiffs should we recognize false light invasion of privacy claims are not sufficient to justify the recognition in this jurisdiction of such inherently constitutionally suspect claims for relief.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“susceptible of two meanings, one defamatory, and that the defamatory meaning was intended and was so understood by those to whom the publication was made.”
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.