Prewitt v. Sexton’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
11 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently May 2016
11 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))
Relies on Raine v. Drasin · Ammerman v. Newman · Davis v. Brady · Hill v. Willmott · 252 Cal. App. 2d 810 - Kassan v. Bledsoe
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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Although proof that an attorney initiated civil proceedings when he was ignorant of the law and faded to research it would be evidence bearing on lack of probable cause, here it must be said that even if mistaken, Prewitt’s views of the law were not arbitrary and unreasonable. If not correct, at the least he had viable arguments to support his position. A view of the law that is arguably correct cannot be the basis upon which to charge lack of probable cause. As with the attorney’s understanding of facts, all that is required to establish probable cause is that the attorney’s view of the law is a tenable position. The question of probable cause underlying the tort of wrongful use of civil proceedings does not turn on whether a court subsequently decides the attorney erred in his view of the law, any more than it turns on whether he was subsequently unable to prove his client’s claims regarding the facts, so long as his views were tenable at the outset.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Ford v. Faller
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.