Batzel v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
333 F.3d 1018 · 2003
Citation profile
73 federal appellate · 11 district · 29 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 214 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2025 · most notably Yahoo! Inc. v. La Ligue Contre Le Racisme et L'Antisemitisme (2006), Doe v. Myspace, Inc. (2008)
73 federal appellate · 11 district · 29 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.
Appellate journey
Relationships
Relies on Erie Co v. Tompkins · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Catlin v. United States · Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union · Digital Equipment Corp. v. Desktop Direct, 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 214 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley the Fair Housing Council of San Diego, Individually and on Behalf of the General Public v. roommates.com, Llc, Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley the Fair Housing Council of San Diego, Individually and on Behalf of the General Public v. roommate.com, LLC · 374 N.J. Super. 475 - Donato v. Moldow“[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“A cause of action against a person arising from any act of that person in furtherance of the person's right of petition or free speech under the United States Constitution or the California Constitution in connection with a public issue shall be subject to a special motion to strike, unless the court determines that the plaintiff has established that there is a probability that the plaintiff will prevail on the claim.”
7 later decisions 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.