DeVito v. Schwartz’s Empirical Analysis
2001
Citation profile
10 district · 41 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 51 later decisions — most recently August 2025 · most notably 91 Conn. App. 698 - Lawton v. Weiner (2005), Lega Siciliana Social Club, Inc. v. Germaine (2003)
10 district · 41 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 Berry v. Loiseau · Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway Co. v. Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission · Battista v. United Illuminating Co. · Bleich v. Ortiz · Riccio v. Abate
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.
“Defamation is comprised of the torts of libel and slander. Defamation is that which tends to injure reputation in the popular sense; to diminish the esteem, respect, goodwill or confidence in which the plaintiff is held, or to excite adverse, derogatory, or unpleasant feelings or opinions against him. . . . Slander is oral defamation. [The] court has delineated specific categories of speech deemed actionable per se where the defamatory meaning of [the speech] is apparent on the face of the statement. . . .”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage“When the defamatory words are actionable per se, the law conclusively presumes the existence of injury to the plaintiff's reputation.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“To recover special damages, the plaintiff must prove that he suffered economic loss that was legally caused by the defendant's defamatory statements, even where the defamation is per se.”
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.