Pedersen v. Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

211 federal appellate · 49 district · 569 state decisions

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 964 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ * * * there can be no doubt that a right of recovery thereunder arises only where the injury is suffered while the carrier is engaged in interstate commerce, and while the employee is employed by the carrier in such commerce. * * * “The true test always is: Is the work in .question a part of the interstate commerce in whieh the carrier is engaged?””

   32 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. McLeod v. Threlkeld · Deal v. Coal & Coke Ry. Co.

2. ““Considering the status of the railroad as a highway for both interstate and intrastate commerce, the interdependence of both classes of traffic in point of movement and safety, the practical difficulty in separating or dividing the general work of the switching crew, and the nature and extent of the power confided to Congress by the commerce clause of the Constitution, we entertain no doubt that the liability of the carrier for injuries suffered by a member of the crew in the course of its general work was subject to regulation by Congress, whether the particular service being performed at the time of the injury, isolatedly considered, was in interstate or intrastate commerce. * * * Passing from the question of power to that of its exercise, we find that the controlling provision in the act of April 22, 1908, reads as follows: ‘That every common carrier by railroad while engaging in commerce between any of the several states * * * shall -be liable in damages to any person suffering injury while he is employed by such carrier in such commerce, or, in the case of the death of such employee, to his or her personal representative, * * * for such injury or death resulting in whole or in past from the negligence of any of the officers, agents, or employees of such carrier, or by reason of any defect or insufficiency, due to its negligence, in its cars, engines, appliances, machinery, track, roadbed, works, boats, wharves, or other equipment.’ Giving to the words ‘suffering injury ”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. St. Louis & S. F. R. Co. v. Brown · Southern Railway Co. v. Jacobs

3. ““On the afternoon of his injury the plaintiff and another employé, acting under the direction of their foreman, were carrying from a tool car to a bridge, known as the Duffield bridge, some bolts or rivets which, were to be used by them that night or very early the next morning in ‘repairing that bridge’*; the repair to consist in taking out an existing girder and inserting a new one. The bridge could be reached only by passing over an intervening temporary bridge at James avenue. These bridges were being * * * used in both interstate and intrastate commerce. While the plaintiff was carrying a sack of holts or rivets over the James Avenue bridge, on his way to the Duffield bridge, he was run down and injured by an intrastate passenger train.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Raymond v. Chicago, M. & St. P. Ry. Co. · Grow v. Oregon Short Line Ry. Co.