124 W. Va. 224 - Smith v. Whitlock’s Empirical Analysis
1942
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently November 2004
16 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 112 Ohio St. 485 - Drew v. Gross · Hoffman v. Dickinson · Neil v. West Virginia Timber Co. · Walke v. Premier Pocahontas Collieries Co.
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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“... not because the injury occurs on a highway, nor by reason of any statute, nor from the fact that it was inflicted by his horse, but from the very right of persons, wherever they lawfully are, to be free from careless, or purposeful injury by another — from the fundamental law, not necessary to be written, but inherent in any conception of justice, that the owner of property shall not intentionally, or negligently, so use it, or permit it to be used, as to injure another.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“A statute is not always required to establish the duty of ordinary care.... Apart from specific statute the law imposes upon every person the duty of using his own property so as not to injure his neighbor. As conditions change and modes of life alter, the duty to observe ordinary care in the use of one’s own property, while not altering in its essentials, will alter in its details. What ordinary care demands depends always upon the circumstances of the case, and a primary factor among those circumstances is the fact whether the injury could or could not have reasonably have been anticipated from the acts done or left undone by the defendant. When the state was established it was not in general unsafe to permit domestic animals to run at large in the highway outside of the confines of municipalities, and damage from so doing could not generally be reasonably anticipated. With the growth of traffic, particularly automobile traffic, the situation is changed, but the duty to observe ordinary care remains the same. This duty in modern times requires that the owner of livestock exercise ordinary care not to let his livestock stray out onto a much-traveled highway, because under our modern traffic conditions he can reasonably anticipate that, if the livestock stray onto such a highway, they are apt to damage persons or property.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“6. That the Defendant negligently failed to maintain a fence that prevented "Sentry" from running at large on State Route 51. 7. That the Defendant should have anticipated that the fence, if any, on his property would not prevent "Sentry” from running at large on State Route 51, a heavily traveled two-lane undivided asphalt highway connecting, Inwood, Berkeley County, West Virginia, with Charles Town, Jefferson County, West Virginia. 8. That the Defendant negligently failed to anticipate that "Sentry’s” running at large on State Route 51 would result in injury to persons on the highway.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.