20 Ill. 2d 301 - Saunders v. Schultz’s Empirical Analysis
1960
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 93 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 104 later decisions — most recently May 2017 · most notably 168 Ill. 2d 83 - Leonardi v. Loyola University of Chicago (1995), 114 Ill. 2d 107 - Ballweg v. City of Springfield (1986)
3 federal appellate · 93 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 12 Ill. 2d 231 - People Ex Rel. Terry v. Fisher · Mattfeld v. Nester · Holton v. Daly · 122 Cal. App. 2d 466 - Follansbee v. Benzenberg · Ohnesorge v. Chicago 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 104 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"[T]here is presently no legally cogent reason for denying a spouse the right to recover for medical and funeral expenses incurred on behalf of a mate who was wrongfully injured or killed. The rule denying such recovery originated as a corollary of the archaic common-law rule that there could be no recovery for the death of a human being, which is no longer the law. Moreover, under the present status of the law, a surviving spouse is personally liable under family expense statutes for the medical and burial expenses incurred on behalf of a husband or wife. Viewing the situation realistically, this liability of the surviving spouse for such expenses constitutes very real damages. Since that liability results from defendant's tortious conduct, it is only legally sound, and in accordance with basic negligence principles, that the burden of such damages should fall, not on the innocent victim, but upon the tortfeasor." (Emphasis added.) Saunders v. Schultz (1960), 20 Ill.2d 301, 309-10 .”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[W]e believe that the common law should be construed to permit the recovery of such funeral and medical expenses in an action either by the decedent’s estate, or, as in the instant case where no claim was made, by the surviving spouse.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It is true, as the appellant argues, that some other jurisdictions have arrived at a different result. However, the rule of Holton v. Daly, supra, has been the interpretation of the law in Illinois for nearly sixty years. It has been followed in this court at least ten times, many more times than that in the AppeUate Courts and in an unknown and unknowable number of cases in the trial courts of this State. If that rule is to be changed at this time, it must be accomplished by a legislative enactment; this court must adhere to the rule of stare decisis. The trial court and the AppeUate Court correctly interpreted the law as it exists in IUinois, and the judgment of the AppeUate Court is affirmed.””
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.