Cotulla v. Kerr’s Empirical Analysis
1889
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 94 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 102 later decisions — most recently June 2016 · most notably Leyendecker & Associates, Inc. v. Wechter (1984), Musser v. Smith Protective Services, Inc. (1987)
6 federal appellate · 94 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.
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 102 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““When a libelous publication relates to a person in office it may affect him in his personal or official character. If it relates to him personally alone it is governed by the same rules that apply to an individual. If it applies to him as an officer, the better opinion seems to be that to make it actionable per se the charge must be of such a nature that if true it would be cause for his removal from office.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“In the absence of doubt or ambiguity growing out of the language used in the publication, we understand it to be the duty of the court to determine and instruct the jury whether or not it is libelous; but, where there is uncertainty or doubt, it is the duty of the court to give the jury a definition of what is a libel, and leave it for the jury to say whether the offense has been proved.”
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.