Purchase v. Seelye’s Empirical Analysis
1918
Citation profile
13 federal appellate · 2 district · 33 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 48 later decisions — most recently October 2001 · most notably Thompson v. Fox (1937), Milks v. McIver (1934)
13 federal appellate · 2 district · 33 state decisions — followed in 13 states
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 Mohr v. Williams · Pratt v. Davis · Leddy v. Barney · Gray v. Boston Elevated Railway Co. · McGarrahan v. New York, New Haven, & Hartford Railroad
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 48 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The railroad company could not be held liable because of the defendant's mistaken belief that he was operating upon some person other than the plaintiff; such a mistake was not an act of negligence which could be found to flow legitimately as a natural and probable consequence of the original injury, and a ruling in effect to the contrary could not properly have been made. * * * 12”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“act of the defendant [surgeon] * * * was a wholly wrongful, independent and intervening cause for which the original wrongdoer was in no way responsible.”
1 later decision 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.