Hi Владимир, When a person refers to their "case" in this context, it is interchangeable with the english word "back". Let me write you a few examples of the common expressions/examples, of how this is used here in Australia. 1. Pretend that your mother has been asking you again and again to clean up your room. You are sitting at your computer doing some work, and you hear her yell out to you from the kitchen. She says, "Владимир, have you cleaned your room yet?" You are frustrated at this question and answer back, "No, I told you I will do it later, now get off my case!" 2. A few minutes later, your friend calls you. During your conversation, they ask you if something is wrong, because they think you sound a little angry. You apologise and tell them that your mum has been on your case all day about cleaning your room. In the two examples above, you could interchange the word case/back in either one, and it still works. To be a little more colloquial, sometimes in Australia, we also use the expression "busting my balls". For example: I can't go out drinking this weekend, as my girlfriend has been busting my balls to spend more time with her. So, if someone is "on your back", "on your case", "busting your balls", "busting your chops", they all mean that someone is giving you grief, or hassling you about something. So, just to finish off……getting back to your initial example: Angela would have been all over my case ….it should actually be…. Angela would have been ON my case. Another way of writing that could also be: Angela would have given me a lot of grief. Hope this helps.

Here's another way to think about it. - "case": think of a teacher dealing with 25 pupils. Any notably bad thing they do will become a "case" (an incident and the facts associated with it) the teacher will have to deal with, to correct the wrong or to reprimand the perpetrator for example. - "getting on someone's case": If the teacher gets on a pupil's case, he is taking actions on it, like scolding the pupil, contacting her parents, etc. For the pupil, this is an uncomfortable and stressful thing. - "getting all over someone's case": This has the same meaning as "getting on someone's case" but has a stronger feel. "on a case" sounds static and ordinary, while "all over a case" gives the sense that the person is actively trying all kinds of different things about it. So "Angela would have been all over my case" means she would have been upset, complaining and accusing me, or jumping up and down about my work not yet done, etc, etc. "all over" gives the image of her acting and talking left and right all over your back compared with "on".

Perhaps: without you Angela would have been very upset/annoyed with me. Or stronger expressions such as: without you Angela would have bitten my head off! / without you Angela would have eaten me alive.