142 W. Va. 824 - Ellis v. Henderson’s Empirical Analysis
1957
Citation profile
10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently May 2017
10 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 121 W. Va. 115 - Webb v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co. · 130 W. Va. 466 - Wright v. Valan · 128 W. Va. 531 - Holley v. Purity Baking Co. · Jones v. Riverside Bridge Co. · 98 W. Va. 412 - Jankey v. Hope Natural Gas 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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The doctrine of res ipsa loquitur is that when a person who is without fault is injured by an instrumentality at the time within the exclusive control of another person and the injury is such as in the ordinary course of events does not occur if the person who has control uses due care, the injury is charged to the failure of such other person to exercise due care. It is based on the lessons of experience that an injury, in the usual course of every day conduct, does not occur if the person who controls an instrumentality which will likely produce injury exercises reasonable care to prevent its occurrence; and it is given practical effect as a part of the judicial function to administer justice between litigants.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.