Brown v. Branch’s Empirical Analysis
1940
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently March 1964
4 federal appellate · 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 Gale v. Wilber · Brown v. Parker
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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““These were but trivial courtesies such as a host might well expect of his guest on such an occasion. There is not the slightest evidence that they were intended to convert the relation of a gratuitous guest into that of a passenger for a consideration. “Therefore, since the evidence relied on fails to show that the defendant derived any pecuniary benefit from his transportation of the plaintiff, or from the latter’s attendance at the picnic, and likewise fails to show the existence of any contractual relations between the parties, the lower court correctly held that the plaintiff was a gratuitous guest and not a passenger in the truck at the time of the accident. ’ ’ (Citing Gale v. Wilber, 163 Va. 211, 217-219 , 175 S. E. 739 ; Brown v. Parker, 167 Va. 286, 288, 289 , 189 S. E. 339 , 341.)”
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.