Walker v. Williams’s Empirical Analysis
1964
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently November 1994 · most notably Eaton v. McLain (1994), Hudson v. Gaitan (1984)
3 federal appellate · 23 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 Cohens v. Virginia · Cohens v. Virginia · Comeau v. Comeau · Sanders v. Brown · Greenfield v. Miller
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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"`Plaintiff urges that the benefits to a host from social intercourse are just as real as monetary benefits derived from business visitors, and that we should not follow the universal rule classing social guests as licensees, but should give them the same status as business visitors. We have given serious consideration to plaintiff's argument, and in doing so have examined a number of cases from other jurisdictions wherein a similar argument was made and rejected. See cases set out above. As a result we are convinced that we should join the great current of authority and hold that a social guest is not in law an invitee but is a licensee to whom the owner owes no duty except to refrain from willfully injuring him or from committing negligence so gross as to amount to willfulness, or from leading him into a trap. Jack M. Bass & Co. v. Parker, 208 Tenn. 38 , 343 S.W.2d 879 ; Birdsong v. City of Chattanooga, 204 Tenn. 264 , 319 S.W.2d 233 ; Smith v. Burks, 43 Tenn. App. 32 , 305 S.W.2d 748 ; Westborne Coal Co. v. Willoughby, 133 Tenn. 257 , 180 S.W. 322 . `In the instant case no claim is made, nor is there any evidence whatever to show that defendants were guilty of any wilful or wanton misconduct nor that the defendants led the plaintiff into a trap. Consequently, we are of the opinion that the trial court's action in directing a verdict for the defendants was correct.'" Supra, pp. 201, 202, 384 S.W.2d p. 450.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““ . . . Ordinarily the word ‘trap’ as used with reference to liability therefor in tort designates a device or condition created with intent to injure, but, of course, we no longer follow such strict use of the word, and ‘trap’ as now used in this type of lawsuit generally means any kind of a hidden dangerous condition and there need not be any intent to injure.””
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.