White v. Frank’s Empirical Analysis
855 F.2d 956 · 1988
Citation profile
54 federal appellate · 14 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 154 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2025 · most notably Kalina v. Fletcher (1997), Rose 88-1634 v. Bartle a Reed W 88-1646 (1989)
54 federal appellate · 14 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.
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1291 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 42 U.S.C. § 1985
Relies on Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp. · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Malley v. Briggs · Imbler v. Pachtman · Bibby v. United States
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 154 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“As with the grand jury, . . . the public prosecutor's role in a criminal prosecution will not necessarily shield a complaining witness from subsequent civil liability where the witness's testimony is knowingly and maliciously false.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he fact that [the officer's] testimony at a judicial proceeding may have been the means by which he initiated the prosecution does not permit him to transpose the immunity available for defamation as a defense to malicious prosecution.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Harris v. Roderick · Sykes v. James“the distinction reflected the difference between the two causes of action by which those falsely accused sought to hold a witness liable. In an action for defamation, the perjurious witness was sought to be held liable only for the defamatory effect of his testimony, and in such an action he enjoyed absolute immunity upon a threshold showing that the allegedly defamatory statements were relevant to the judicial proceedings.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.