68 Ark. App. 313 - Carmical v. McAfee’s Empirical Analysis
1999
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 22 later decisions — most recently October 2025
4 federal appellate · 17 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 Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H · Wallace v. Broyles · Adams v. Arthur · George v. Jefferson Hosp. Ass'n, Inc. · Pugh v. Griggs
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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]o have a probable-cause basis to file a lawsuit, a person need only have the opinion that the chances are good that a court will decide the suit in his favor. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 675 comment, (f) at 460 (1977). The question is not whether the person is correct in believing that his complaint is meritorious, but whether his opinion that his complaint is meritorious was a reasonable opinion. Id. A person need have only a reasonable opinion that his complaint is meritorious because “[t]o hold that the person initiating civil proceedings is liable unless the claim proved to be valid would throw an undesirable burden upon those who by advancing claims not heretofore recognized nevertheless aid in making the law consistent with changing conditions and changing opinions.” Id.”
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.