427 Pa. Super. 471 - Mosley v. Observer Publishing Co.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

12 state decisions

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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[t]he question of whether the fair report privilege has been abused has been distilled ... to a “gist” or “sting” test. “A statement is substantially accurate if its ‘gist’ or ‘sting’ is true, that is, if it produces the same effect on the mind of the recipient which the precise truth would have produced.” Williams v. WCAU-TV, 555 F.Supp. 198, 202 (E.D.Pa.1983). The question is whether a reasonable person, comparing the [subject matter of the official report or proceeding] and the article as a whole, could conclude that the article was a fair and accurate rendition of the [subject matter]. If the read er could conclude that the article carries with it a materially greater “sting,” then the fair report privilege has been abused and is thus forfeited.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. First Lehigh Bank v. Cowen · 534 F. Supp. 2d 546 - Hudak v. Times Pub. Co., Inc.

2. “Summary judgment serves important functions which would be left undone if courts too restrictively viewed their power. Chief among these are avoidance of long and expensive litigation productive of nothing, and curbing the danger that the threat of such litigation will be used to harass or to coerce a settlement. In the First Amendment area, summary procedures are even more essential. For the stake here, if harassment succeeds, is free debate. One of the purposes of the [New York] Times [Co.] v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 , 84 S.Ct. 710 , 11 L.Ed.2d 686 (1964), principle, in addition to protecting persons from being cast in damages in libel suits filed by public officials, is to prevent persons from being discouraged in the full and free exercise of their First Amendment rights with respect to the conduct of their government ... Unless persons, including newspapers, desiring to exercise their First Amendment rights are assured freedom from the harassment of lawsuits, they will tend to become self-censors. And to this extent debate on public issues and the conduct of public officials will become less uninhibited, less robust, and less wide open, for self-censorship affecting the whole public life is “hardly less virulent for being privately administered.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. First Lehigh Bank v. Cowen

3. “The fair report privilege developed as an exception to the common law rule that the republisher of a defamation was subject to liability similar to the risked by the original defamer. Pennsylvania had adopted the republication rule by the turn of the century, and no case brought to our attention suggests that Pennsylvania has abandoned it. To ameliorate the chilling effect on the reporting of newsworthy events occasioned by the combined effect of the republication rule and the truth defense, the law has long recognized a privilege for the press to publish accounts of official proceedings or reports even when these contain defamatory statements. So long as the account presents a fair and accurate summary of the proceedings the law abandons the assumption that the reporter adopts the defamatory remarks as his own.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. First Lehigh Bank v. Cowen