Sylvester v. Armstrong’s Empirical Analysis
1938
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently May 2018
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 Ashcroft v. . Hammond · Klinck v. . Colby · Bacon v. Michigan Central Railroad · Kenney v. Gurley · Russell v. Hayden
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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘In those cases where one person has an interest in the subject matter of the communication and the person to whom the communication is made has a corresponding interest, every communication honestly made in order to protect such common interest is privileged by reason of the occasion.’” Sylvester v. Armstrong, 53 Wyo. 382 , 84 P.2d 729, 732 (1938), quoting from Newell, Slander & Libel § 432 (4th ed.).”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““The communication in such case will, prima facie, be considered as having been made in good faith — i.e., without malice, and the burden of proving the existence of malice is cast upon the person claiming to have been defamed.” Sylvester v. Armstrong, 84 P.2d at 733 .”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““It is the duty of the court in the first instance to determine, as a matter of law, whether or not in a case like that before us the language used is such as tends to show malice. (Citing cases), where it was said that ‘whether or not there has been an abuse of the privilege, the facts otherwise not being in dispute, is a question of law for the court.’ [Lehner v. Berlin Pub. Co., 209 Wis. 536 , 245 N.W. 685 (Page 686.)] In Sherman v. International Publications, Inc., 214 App.Div. 437 , 212 N.Y. S. 478, which- involved a newspaper publication, it was said that ‘as to whether or not the article in question exceeded the bounds of fair criticism and comment was a question of law, for the determination of the court.’ [245 N.W. (page 486.)] In Williams v. Standard-Exam. Pub. Co., 83 Utah 31 , 27 P.2d 1, 17 , the court stated that ‘the question of whether a qualifiedly privileged article is written or published with malicious motive or otherwise is, generally speaking, a question of fact to be determined by the jury. However, in the absence of proof that such communication was published with actual malice, it is within the power and the duty of the court to say as-a matter of law that the motive of the publication was without malice.’ The last three cases do not, we think, mean to state that the jury can never pass-upon the question of whether or not the privilege has been abused in a case like that before us, but merely that the court passes upon the matter in the first instance.”
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.