Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Co. v. Cockrell’s Empirical Analysis
232 U.S. 146 · 1914
Citation profile
167 federal appellate · 184 district · 69 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 729 later decisions (15 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2019 · most notably Wilson v. Republic Iron & Steel Co. (1921), Pullman Co. v. Jenkins (1939)
167 federal appellate · 184 district · 69 state decisions — followed in 16 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 Powers v. Chesapeake O Ry Co · Alabama Great Southern Railway Co. v. Thompson · Wecker v. National Enameling & Stamping Co. · Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railway Co. v. Willard
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 729 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Merely to traverse the allegations upon which the liability of the resident defendant is rested or to apply the epithet 'fraudulent' to the joinder will not suffice: the showing must be such as compels the conclusion that the joinder is without right and made in bad faith.”
17 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Putting out of view, as must he done, the epithets and mere legal conclusions in the petition for removal, it may have disclosed an absence of good faith on the part of the plaintiff in bringing the action at all, but it did not show a fraudulent joinder of the engineer and fireman. With the allegation that they were operating the train which did the injury standing unchallenged, the showing amounted to nothing more than a traverse of the charges of negligence, with an added statement that they were falsely or recklessly made, and could not be proved as to the engineer or fireman. As no negligent act or omission personal to the railway company was charged, and its liability, like that of the two employés, was, in effect, predicated upon the alleged négligenee of the latter, the showing manifestly went to the merits of the action as an entirety and not to the joinder; that is to say, it indicated that the plaintiff’s case was ill founded as to all the defendants. Plainly, this was not such a showing as to engender or compel the conclusion that the two employés were wrongfully brought into a controversy which did not concern them. As they admittedly were in charge of the movement of the train, and their negligence was apparently the principal matter in dispute, the plaintiff had the same right, under the laws of Kentucky, to insist upon their presence as real defendants as upon that of the railway company. We conclude, therefore, that the petition for removal was not such as t”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[Fjalse and untrue, and were known by the plaintiff, or could have been known by the exercise of ordinary diligence, to be false and untrue, and were made for the sole and fraudulent purpose of affording a basis, if possible, for the fraudulent joinder of the engineer and fireman with the railway company, and of thereby fraudulently depriving the latter of its right to have the action removed into the Federal court; and that none of the charges of negligence on the part of the engineer or fireman could be sustained on the trial.”
5 later decisions 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.