Chaisson v. Williams’s Empirical Analysis
1931
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 30 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions — most recently October 1986 · most notably Chasse v. Albert (1960), May Department Stores Co. v. Bell (1932)
2 federal appellate · 30 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.
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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Where an automobile, and the operation thereof, are exclusively within the control of the defendant, whose guest is injured, and it is not reasonably in the power of such guest to prove the cause of the accident, which is one not commonly incident, according to everyday experience, to the operation of an automobile, the occurrence itself, although unexplained, is prima facie evidence of negligence on the part of the defendant. Res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Gendron v. Gendron“Though mere accident is not proof of negligence, some accompanying elemental facts may, under ruling by the Court, afford room for the jury to infer that the negligence of the defendant caused the injury.”
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.