Zeller v. Consolini’s Empirical Analysis
2000
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 8 district · 57 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 69 later decisions — most recently June 2025 · most notably Ventres v. Goodspeed Airport, LLC (2005), Coll v. First American Title Insurance (2011)
4 federal appellate · 8 district · 57 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 15 U.S.C. § 1 (§ 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act) · 15 U.S.C. § 45 (§ 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914) · 29 U.S.C. § 151 (§ 1 of the National Labor Relations Act)
Relies on Eastern Railroad Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc. · California Motor Transport Co. v. Trucking Unlimited · United Mine Workers v. Pennington · United Mine Workers of America v. M Pennington Local Union No 189 Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. Claiborne Hardware Company
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 69 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Although the party seeking summary judgment has the burden of showing the nonexistence of any material fact . . . [the nonmovant] must substantiate its adverse claim by showing that there is a genuine issue of material fact together with the evidence disclosing the existence of such an issue. . . . It is not enough, however, for the opposing party merely to assert the existence of such a disputed issue. Mere assertions of fact . . . are insufficient to establish the existence of a material fact and, therefore, cannot refute evidence properly presented to the court.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“[T]he Noerr-Pennington doctrine is similar to existing law in Connecticut governing the torts of interference with business relations and vexatious litigation. Interference with contractual relations and vexatious litigation . . . are closely intertwined . . . as tortious interference with contractual relations is predicated on the facts underlying the vexatious litigation claim. . . . For a vexatious litigation claim to succeed, it is necessary to prove want of probable cause, malice and a termination of suit in the plaintiff's favor. . . . Probable cause is the knowledge of facts sufficient to justify a reasonable person in the belief that there are reasonable grounds for prosecuting an action. . . . The existence of probable cause is an absolute protection . . . and what facts . . . constitute probable cause is always a question of law.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[A]lthough the Noerr-Pennington defense is most often asserted against antitrust claims, it is equally applicable to many types of claims which seek to assign liability on the basis of the defendant's exercise of its first amendment rights.”
2 later decisions 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.