Mayer v. Johnson’s Empirical Analysis
1941
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 23 later decisions — most recently May 2016
22 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 Missouri Pacific Railway Co. v. Shuford · Seinsheimer v. Burkhart · Rowan v. Allen · Texas Pacific Coal & Oil Co. v. Robertson · Napier v. Mooneyham
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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"That it was negligence to drive at such a high rate of speed as must have been attained by the car cannot be questioned, but under the holdings of our courts in the cases above cited and many others it cannot be said that driving at such a rate of speed, under the circumstances revealed by the record in the case, of itself, is gross negligence. * * * "Discussing the question of gross negligence, Judge Smedley, in delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court in Texas Pac. Coal & Oil Co. v. Robertson, supra ( 125 Tex. 4 , 79 S.W.2d [830] 831, 98 A.L.R. 262 ), said: `The person charged with the act or omission cannot be consciously indifferent to the rights or welfare of another unless he knows, or should know, that such another will probably be affected by the act or omission.' Applying that principle to the testimony in this case, in order to charge appellee, Johnson, Jr., with gross negligence, we are required to find from the testimony that, after discovering the bank ahead of him, there was an entire want of care on his part as to whether his friends and invited guests were injured or not. We must say that he was consciously indifferent to their rights or their welfare and, in view of the fact that he, himself, was also in the automobile, that he was likewise consciously indifferent to his own safety. To be consciously indifferent one must be conscious of the fact that he is indifferent at the time and upon the occasion in question, and unless we could say from the testimon”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“That it was negligence to drive at such a high rate of speed as must have been attained by the car cannot be questioned, but under the holdings of our courts in the cases above cited and many others it cannot be said that driving at such a rate of speed, under the circumstances revealed by the record in the case, of itself, is gross negligence. * * *”
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.