Rupe v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1957
Citation profile
24 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently January 1986
24 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 Nichols v. Nold · Dougall v. Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway Co. · Starks Food Markets, Inc. v. El Dorado Refining Co. · Lamb v. Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co. · Henderson v. National Mutual Casualty 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.
“When an automobile and the operation thereof are exclusively within a host's control, and it is not reasonably within the power of the injured guest to prove the cause of the accident, which is not one commonly incident to the operation of the automobile, the occurrence itself, although unexplained, is prima facie evidence of the host’s negligence....”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“that when the automobile driven by the defendant reached a point on said highway about 1.4 miles east of said town of Hazelton on a level stretch of road, it was driven off the road by defendant into a concrete embankment, the severe impact of which caused the almost immediate death of the deceased”
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.