Ammerman v. Hubbard Broadcasting, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 35 later decisions — most recently June 2018 · most notably Marchiondo v. Brown (1982), Posadas v. City of Reno (1993)
6 federal appellate · 26 state decisions — followed in 10 states
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
Relies on New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. · St. Amant v. Thompson · Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc. · Time Incorporated v. Pape
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 35 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We begin with the common ground. Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges or juries but on the competition of other ideas. But there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact. Neither the intentional lie nor the careless error materially advances society’s interest in “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” debate on public issues.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[s]ubstantial truthfulness is a defense to an action for defamation.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. No. 98-2228
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.