129 Wis. 2d 239 - State v. Williquette’s Empirical Analysis
1986
Citation profile
128 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 135 later decisions — most recently March 2026 · most notably Degren v. State (1999), 130 Wis. 2d 79 - Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club v. Wisconsin Department of Health & Social Services (1986)
128 state decisions — followed in 12 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 Rowell v. United States · State v. Fabritz · 106 Wis. 2d 368 - State v. Alles · Pope v. State · 119 Wis. 2d 664 - State v. Wittrock
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 135 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“statute must be interpreted on the basis of the plain meaning of its terms.”
19 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Kaster · State v. Champion“[w]hoever ... subjects a child to cruel maltreatment.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“Generally one has no legal duty to aid another person in peril, even when that aid can be rendered without danger or inconvenience to himself. He need not shout a warning to a blind man headed for a precipice or to an absent-minded one walking into a gunpowder room with a lighted candle in hand. He need not pull a neighbor’s baby out of a pool of water or rescue an unconscious person stretched across the railroad tracks, though the baby is drowning or the whistle of an approaching train is heard in the distance. A doctor is not legally bound to answer a desperate call from the frantic parents of a sick child, at least if it is not one of his regular patients. A moral duty to take affirmative action is not enough to impose a legal duty to do so. But there are situations which do give rise to a duty to act: (1) Duty Based Upon Relationship. The common law imposes affirmative duties upon persons standing in certain personal relationships to other persons — upon parents to aid their small children, upon husbands to aid their wives, upon ship captains to aid their crews, upon masters to aid their servants. Thus a parent may be guilty of criminal homicide for failure to call a doctor for his sick child, a mother for failure to prevent the fatal beating of her baby by her lover, a husband for failure to aid his imperiled wife, a ship captain for failure to pick up a seaman or passenger fallen overboard, and an employer for failure to aid his endangered employee. Action may be requir”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Michael v. State
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.