Seaboard Air Line Railway v. Horton’s Empirical Analysis
233 U.S. 492 · 1914
Citation profile
246 federal appellate · 35 district · 674 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,201 later decisions (115 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2010 · most notably Urie v. Thompson (1949), Rogers v. Missouri Pacific Railroad (1957)
246 federal appellate · 35 district · 674 state decisions — followed in 43 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 Mondou v. New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad · Hough v. Railway Co. · Washington Co v. McDade · Murdock v. City of Memphis
Cited together with Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Co. v. De Atley · Jacobs v. Southern Railway Co. · Patton v. Texas & Pacific Railway Co. · Gila Valley Globe Northern Railway Company v. John Hall · Mondou 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 1,201 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The assumption of risk, even though the risk be obvious, may be free from any suggestion of fault or negligence on the part of the employee. The risks may he present, notwithstanding the exercise of all reasonable care on his part. Some employments are necessarily fraught with danger to the workman,- — danger that must he and is confronted in the line of his duty. Such dangers as are normally and necessarily incident to the occupation are presumably taken into the account in fixing the rate of wages. And a workman of mature years is taken to assume risks of this sort, whether he is actually aware of them or not. But risks of another sort, not naturally incident to the occupation, may arise out of the failure of the employer to exercise due care with respect to providing a safe place of work and suitable and safe appliances for the work. These the employee is not treated as assuming until he becomes aware of the defect or disrepair and of tho risk arising from it, unless defect and risk alike are so obvious that an ordinarily prudent person under the circumstances would have observed and appreciated them. These distinctions have been recognized and applied in numerous decisions of this court.””
30 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Section 1. This act shall apply only to workmen engaged in manual or mechanical labor in the employments described in this section: * ~ * (b) Work in any shop, mill, factory or other pla.ee, on, in connection with ox-in proximity to any hoisting apparatus, or any machinery propelled or operated by steam or other mechanical power in which shop, mill, factory, ox-other place, five or more persons are engaged in manual or mechanical la-boi\ * * * “Sec. 2. If, in the course of any of the employments above described, personal injury by accident arising out of and in the course of the employment is caused to any workman employed therein, in whole or in part, * ® * by the negligence of the employer, or any of his or its officers, agents, or employes, or by reason of any defect or insufficiency due to his, its or their negligence in the condition of his or its plant, ways, works, machinery, ® * * equipment, or appliances, then such employer shall be liable to such workman for all damages occasioned to him. * * * The workman shall not be held to have assumed the risk of any injury due to any cause specified in this section; but there shall bo no liability under this section for any injury to which it shall be made to appear by a preponderance of evidence that the negligence of the plaintiff contributed.””
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““. . . It was the intention of Congress to base the action upon negligence only, and to exclude responsibility of the carrier to its employees for defects and insufficiencies not attributable to negligence. The common-law rule is that an employer is not a guarantor of the safety of the place of work or of the machinery and appliances of the work; the extent of its duty to its employees is to see that ordinary care and prudence are exercised, to the end that the place in which the work is to be performed and the tools and appliances of the work may be safe for the workmen.””
8 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.