Bevil v. Johnson’s Empirical Analysis
1957
Citation profile
178 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 178 later decisions — most recently June 2018 · most notably Villarreal v. San Antonio Truck & Equipment (1999), Reed v. Reed (1958)
178 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 Callahan v. Staples · First Natl. Bank of Houston v. Fox · 31 Tex. Civ. App. 626 - Hall v. City of Austin · Johnson v. Bevil
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 178 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The matter rests in the sound discretion of the trial court. It is not an unbridled discretion, but a judicial discretion subject to review. Upon review, the question is whether there was a clear abuse of discretion by the trial court. That is a question of law.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"Where the defendant in a suit is called to answer and has responded to the call, the duty devolves on the plaintiff to proceed in prosecuting the suit to a conclusion with reasonable diligence, and whenever a delay of an unreasonable duration occurs, such delay, if not sufficiently explained, will raise a conclusive presumption of abandonment of the plaintiff's suit, * * * discontinuance results." [Emphasis added.]”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The fact that respondents had no intention to abandon it, or that their attorney had hopes of settling the case, cannot be made a ground for charging an abuse of discretion by the trial court.””
2 later decisions 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.