Smith v. McDonald’s Empirical Analysis
737 F.2d 427 · 1984
Citation profile
12 federal appellate · 1 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 36 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2021 · most notably McDonald v. Smith (1985), Celebrezze v. Netzley (1990)
12 federal appellate · 1 district · 7 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.
Appellate journey
Relationships
Relies on Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp. · Abney v. United States · Eastern Railroad Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc. · California Motor Transport Co. v. Trucking Unlimited · Briscoe v. W
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 36 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Deferral [of appeal] would defeat [the defendant's] claim that he should not be put to trial, which is the initial protection of absolute privilege.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“the right of the people . . . to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. McDonald v. Smith“contained false, slanderous, libelous, inflammatory and derogatory statements”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. McDonald v. Smith
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.