Wampler v. Higgins’s Empirical Analysis
2001
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 117 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 147 later decisions — most recently January 2026 · most notably Westfield Insurance v. Galatis (2003), 227 Ill. 2d 381 - Imperial Apparel, Ltd. v. Cosmo's Designer Direct, Inc. (2008)
2 federal appellate · 117 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
Relies on New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. · Patterson v. McLean Credit Union · Village of Grafton v. Ohio Edison Co. · First National Bank of Boston v. X Bellotti
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 147 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“seek[s] to determine whether the allegedly defamatory statements are objectively capable of proof or disproof, for 'a reader cannot rationally view an unverifiable statement as conveying actual facts.'”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Boulger v. Woods · Boulger v. Woods“determine whether the allegedly defamatory statement has a precise meaning and thus is likely to give rise to clear factual implications.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“a court must consider the totality of the circumstances. Specifically, a court should consider: the specific language at issue, whether the statement is verifiable, the general context of the statement, and the broader context in which the statement appeared.”
2 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.