Sofka v. Thal’s Empirical Analysis
1983
Citation profile
14 federal appellate · 70 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 96 later decisions — most recently December 2024 · most notably ITT Commercial Finance Corp. v. Mid-America Marine Supply Corp. (1993), Heberer v. Shell Oil Co. (1988)
14 federal appellate · 70 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 Downey v. United Weatherproofing, Inc. · Zuber v. Clarkson Construction Co. · Bass v. Nooney Co. · Stephens v. Kansas City Gas Company · Gerber v. Schutte Investment Co.
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 96 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) a false, material representation; (2) the speaker's knowledge of its falsity or his ignorance of its truth; (3) the speaker's intent that it be acted upon by the hearer in a manner reasonably contemplated; (4) the hearer's ignorance of the falsity of the statement; (5) the hearer's reliance on its truth, and the right to rely thereon; and (6) proximate injury.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage“However, the law does not concern itself with trifles, and there is liability for nuisance only to those whom it causes significant harm, of a kind that would be suffered by a normal person in the community or by property in normal condition and used for a normal purpose. By significant harm is meant harm of importance, involving more than slight inconvenience or petty annoyance, determined by the standard of normal persons or property in the particular locality. If normal persons living in the community would regard the invasion as definitely offensive, seriously annoying or intolerable, it is significant. If normal persons in the locality would not be substantially annoyed or disturbed, the invasion is not significant, even though the idiosyncra-cies [sic] of the particular plaintiff may make it unendurable to him.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“One who gives publicity to a matter concerning another that places the other before the public in a false light is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy, if (a) the false light in which the other was placed would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and (b) the actor had knowledge of or acted in reckless disregard as to the falsity of the publicized matter and the false light in which the other would be placed.”
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.