Smithers v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
204 U.S. 632 · 1907
Citation profile
100 federal appellate · 29 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 215 later decisions (16 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably St Paul Mercury Indemnity Co v. Red Cab Co (1938), Rosado v. Wyman (1970)
100 federal appellate · 29 district ·
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 Barry v. Edmunds · Howe Scale Company of 1886 v. Wyckoff Seamans Benedict · Globe Refining Company v. Landa Cotton Oil Company · Grace v. American Central Insurance · Scott v. Donald
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 215 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The rule that the plaintiff’s allegations of value govern in determining the jurisdiction, except where upon the face of his own pleadings it is not legally possible for him to recover the jurisdictional amount, controls even where the declarations show that a perfect defense might be interposed to a sufficient amount of the claim to reduce it below the jurisdictional amount””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“to interpose and try a sufficient part of the controversy between the parties to satisfy himself that the plaintiff ought to recover less than the jurisdictional amount, and to conclude, therefore, that the real controversy between the parties is concerning a subject of less than the jurisdictional value.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Ordinarily the plaintiffs claim with respect to the value of the property taken from him or the amount of damages incurred by him through the defendants’ wrongful act measures, for jurisdictional purposes, the value of the amount in controversy ... unless, upon inspection, it appears that, as a matter of law, it is not possible for the plaintiff to recover the jurisdictional amount.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Scaralto v. Ferrell
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.