Union Pac Ry Co v. Wyler’s Empirical Analysis
158 U.S. 285 · 1895
Citation profile
135 federal appellate · 42 district · 135 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 409 later decisions (19 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2015 · most notably United States v. Memphis Cotton Oil Co. (1933), Missouri Kansas Texas Pailway Company v. Sallie C Wulf (1913)
135 federal appellate · 42 district · 135 state decisions — followed in 34 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 Cheever v. Wilson · Owings v. Hull · Covington Drawbridge Co. v. Shepherd · Bowen v. Chicago, Burlington & Kansas City Railway 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 409 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The general rule is that an amendment relates back to the time of the filing of the original petition, so that the running of the.statute of limitations against the amendment is arrested thereby. But this rule, from Its very reason, applies only to an amendment which does not create a new cause of action. The principle is that, as the running of the statute is interrupted, b3' the suit and summons, so far as the cause of action then propounded is concerned, it interrupts as to all matters subsequently alleged, by way of amendment, which are part thereof. But where the cause of action relied upon in an amendment is different from that originally asserted, the reason for the rule ceases to exist, and hence the rule itself no longer applies.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““A departure may be either in the substance of the action or defense or the law on which it is founded; as if a declaration be founded on the -common-law, and the replication attempt to -maintain it by a special custom, or act of Parliament.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The latitude of amendment allowed the plaintiff cannot be permitted to work injustice to the defendant, or to deprive him of any just and rightful defense. The plaintiff may introduce a new cause of action by amendment; but such amendment cannot have relation to the commencement of the suit, so as to avoid the bar of the statute of limitations, if the statute would operate a bar to a new suit commenced for that cause of action, at the time of making the amendment. The whole doctrine of relation rests in a fiction of the law. adopted to subserve, and not to defeat, right and justice. When the amendment introduces a new right, or new matter, not within the lis pendens and the issue between the parties, if at the time of its introduction, as to such new right or matter, the statute of limitations has operated a bar, the defendant may insist upon the benefit of the statute, and to him it is as available as if the amendment were a new and independent suit.””
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.