Smith v. Levison’s Empirical Analysis
1928
Citation profile
3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently April 1954
3 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.
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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““* * * When one looks at the lights of an automobile on the road directly ahead of him, it is very difficult to tell whether or not that car is moving. That the defendant did not instantly realize the significance of the lights before him is no element of negligence on his part.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.