Britton v. Koep’s Empirical Analysis
1991
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 4 district · 14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently September 2019
5 federal appellate · 4 district · 14 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
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. · St. Amant v. Thompson · Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts · Rosenblatt v. Baer
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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“government employees having, or appearing to the public to have, substantial responsibility for or control over the conduct of government affairs.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“carries with it duties and responsibilities affecting the lives, liberty, money or property of a citizen or that may enhance or disrupt his enjoyment of life, his peace and tranquility, or that of his family, is a public official within the meaning of the constitutional privilege.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with 'actual malice'-that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. McGuire v. Bowlin
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.