Watson v. Daniel’s Empirical Analysis
1936
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 1 district · 12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently April 2005
4 federal appellate · 1 district · 12 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 Winston v. Gordon · Anderson v. Hygeia Hotel Co. · Lee's Adm'r v. Hill · Mumpower v. City of Bristol · Birmingham v. Chesapeake & Ohio 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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““At common law, personal actions, with few exceptions, died with the death of either party, but by statute now in Virginia all personal actions survive except some actions in tort. Mr. Harrison in his work on Wills and Administration, paragraph 426, says: ‘Those actions survive which consist of injuries to property, real and personal, or grow out of breach of contract. All actions, therefore, for injury to character or the person die with the death of either party. Actions for libel and slander or malicious prosecution, assault and battery, and actions of like character die with the person injured.’ The present action would abate at common law upon the death of the plaintiff. The sole inquiry, which is determinative of this case, is whether or not under our statutes the action would survive the death of the plaintiff. If so, the five-year limitation applies; if not, the one-year limitation is applicable. “It was said by Judge West in Trust Co. v. Fletcher, 152 Va. 868 , 148 S.E. 785 , 787, 73 A.L.R. 1111 , ‘Whether the one-year or the five-years statute applies depends upon whether or not the cause of action would survive. If it would survive, the limitation is five years; if it would not survive, the limitation is one year.’ The test under section 5818 is survivorship. Then what tort actions survive? The answer of this court is found in Winston v. Gordon, 115 Va. 899 , 80 S.E. 756 , 763, where Judge Keith, quoting from Graves on Pleading, p. 16, said: ‘Those for wrong to pro”
3 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.