Johnson v. Nickerson’s Empirical Analysis
1996
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 11 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions — most recently January 2025 · most notably Kiesau v. Bantz (2004), Taggart v. Drake University (1996)
3 federal appellate · 11 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 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. · Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn · Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc. · Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. v. Hepps
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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“have 'a natural tendency to provoke the plaintiff to wrath or expose him to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule.' " Id. (quoting Nickerson , 542 N.W.2d at 510 ). Such statements include "[a]ccusations of indictable crimes of moral turpitude,”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“To recover in an action for defamation, a plaintiff must ordinarily prove some sort of cognizable injury, such as injury to reputation.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“refer[s] to facts or circumstances beyond the words actually used to establish the defamation.”
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.