Cranfill v. Hayden’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 82 state decisions

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 87 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““If a defamatory publication is absolutely privileged, the occasion justifies the language, and no action arises. If the defamatory words are published on an occasion not privileged, and are not'justified, malice is implied, for the reason that every act intentionally done to the damage of another, without legal justification, or excuse, is in the eye of the law malicious. But a defamatory publication which is conditionally privileged occupies a middle ground; that is to say, the publication is privileged provided it was actuated by a sense of duty growing out of the occasion, and provided it was not malicious. When the court finds that the publication is conditionally privileged, the effect of the holding is to cast upon the plaintiff the burden of proving that malice prompted the act — not merely malice which arises by implication of law, but malice in fact, otherwise denominated actual malice. In other words, if the publication be conditionally privileged, malice is not implied from the mere. fact of the publication.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Foley Bros. Dry Goods Co. v. McClain