Lester v. Powers’s Empirical Analysis
1991
Citation profile
7 federal appellate · 20 district · 19 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 51 later decisions — most recently June 2024 · most notably Levinsky's, Inc. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (1997), West v. Thomson Newspapers (1994)
7 federal appellate · 20 district · 19 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 · St. Amant v. Thompson · Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co. · Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc. · Holywell Corp. v. Bank of New York
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 51 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(a) a false and defamatory statement concerning another; (b) an unprivileged publication to a third party; (c) fault amounting at least to negligence on the part of the publisher; and (d) either actionability of the statement irrespective of special harm or the existence of special harm caused by the publication.”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage“Discussion of public officials and public figures on matters of public concern, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared, deserves special favor in a democratic society, and thus such discussion is subject to a conditional privilege — -the “First Amendment privilege” — that can be overcome only by clear and convincing evidence of knowledge or disregard of falsity. We do not require clear and convincing evidence, however, to overcome a conditional privilege that arises at common law and not from the First Amendment.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage““[a]lthough malice (in its ordinary sense of ill will or deliberately outrageous misconduct) must be proven by clear and convincing evidence to support an award of punitive damages, this standard of proof has nothing to do with the ‘actual malice’&emdash;that is, knowledge or disregard of falsity&emdash;required to overcome a conditional privilege in defamation.””
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.