Buschi v. Kirven’s Empirical Analysis
775 F.2d 1240 · 1985
Citation profile
68 federal appellate · 21 district · 29 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 208 later decisions — most recently May 2025 · most notably Gregory v. Chehi (1988), Portman v. County of Santa Clara (1993)
68 federal appellate · 21 district · 29 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
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1985 · 42 U.S.C. § 1986
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Warth v. Seldin · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois · Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill
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 208 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) [a] conspiracy of two or more persons, (2) who are motivated by a specific class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus, to (3) deprive the plaintiff of the equal enjoyment of rights secured by the law to all, (4) and which results in injury to the plaintiff as (5) a consequence of an overt act committed by the defendants in connection with the conspiracy.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[s]imply joining corporate officers as defendants in their individual capacities is not enough to make them persons separate from the corporation in legal contemplation. The plaintiff must also allege that they acted other than in the normal course of their corporate duties. . . . [I]t is not alleged that the individual defendants committed any act of a personal nature except in connection with the corporate affairs.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[Plaintiffs] make no claim of a business-related injury; their claim relates to their employment and possible injury to their employment reputation. In an unbroken line of federal district cases, beginning with Judge Merhige’s opinion in Federated Graphics Companies, Inc. v. Napotnik, 424 F.Supp. 291, 293-94 (E.D.Va. 1976) and continuing as late as Nationwide Mutual Fire Insurance Co. v. Jones, 577 F.Supp. 968, 969-70 (W.D.Va. 1984), the federal district courts in Virginia have consistently held that a right of action is “afforded [under these statutes] only when malicious conduct is directed at one’s business, not one’s person,” and that the statute “focuses upon conduct directed at property, i.e., one’s business,” and applies only to “conspiracies resulting in business-related damages.” The clear thrust of those cases is, as two commentators have said, that “[t]he employment relation [is to] be characterized as a personal right as opposed to a business interest” and is without the ambit of these state statutes. This was made clear in Campbell v. Board of Supervisors, 553 F.Supp. 644, 645 (E.D.Va. 1982), where the court said “the section (i.e., § 18.2-500, which was the only one giving a civil remedy) is aimed at conduct which injures a ‘business’ ” and the statute is to be “construed to exclude employment from its scope.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.