Foster v. Mansfield, Coldwater & Lake Michigan Railroad’s Empirical Analysis
146 U.S. 88 · 1892
Citation profile
62 federal appellate · 11 district · 60 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 217 later decisions (16 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2018 · most notably Holmberg v. Armbrecht (1946), Northern Pacific Railway Co. v. Boyd (1913)
62 federal appellate · 11 district · 60 state decisions — followed in 23 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 Bailey Assignee v. Glover et al. · Kilbourn v. Sunderland · Hammond v. Hopkins · Felix v. Patrick · Pacific Railroad of Missouri v. Missouri Pacific Ry. Co. And Others. 1
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 217 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The defence of want of knowledge on the part of one charged with laches is one easily made, easy to prove by his own oath, and hard to disprove; and hence the tendency of courts in recent years has been to hold the plaintiff to a rigid compliance with the law which demands, not only that he should have been ignorant of the fraud, but that he should have used reasonable diligence to have informed himself of all the facts.”
13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““If a person be ignorant of bis interest in a certain transaction, no negligence is imputable to him for failing to inform himself of his rights; but if he is aware of his interest, and knows that proceedings are pending, the result of which may be prejudicial to such interests, he is bound to look into such proceedings so far as to see that no action is taken to his detriment.” Foster v. Mansfield, Coldwater & Lake Michigan R. R. Co., 146 U. S. 88 , 100, 13 Sup. Ct. 28 , 36 L. Ed. 899 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.