Negley v. Farrow’s Empirical Analysis
1883
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 37 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 39 later decisions — most recently August 2002 · most notably Coleman v. MacLennan (1908), Burt v. Advertiser Newspaper Co. (1891)
2 federal appellate · 37 state decisions — followed in 13 states
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.
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 39 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““No one denies the right of the defendants to discuss and criticise boldly and fearlessly the official conduct of the plaintiff. It is a right which, in every free country belongs to the citizen, and the exercise of it, within lawful and proper limits, affords some protection at least against official abuse and corruption. But there is a broad distinction between fair and legitimate discussion in regard to the conduct of a public man, and the imputation of corrupt motives, by which that conduct may be supposed to be governed. And if one goes out of his way to asperse the personal character of a public man, and to ascribe to him base and corrupt motives, he'must do so at his peril; and must either prove the truth of what he says, or answer in damages to the party injured.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.