Southern Railway Co. v. Crockett’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

28 federal appellate · 8 district · 45 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 107 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““In the case before us the liability of the defendant does not grow out of the common-law duty of master to servant. The Congress, not satisfied with the common-law duty and its resulting liability, has prescribed and defined the duty by statute. We have nothing to do but to ascertain and declare the meaning of a few simple words in which the duty is described. It is enacted that ‘no cars, either loaded or unloaded, shall be used in interstate traffic which do not comply with the standard.’ There is no escape from the meaning of these words. Explanation cannot clarify them, and ought not to be employed to confuse them or lessen their significance. The obvious purpose of the Congress was to supplant the qualified duty of the common law with an absolute duty deemed by it more just. If the railroad does, in point of fact, use cars which do not comply with the standard, it violates the plain prohibitions of the law, and there arises from that violation the liability to make compensation to one who is injured by it. It is urged that this is a harsh construction. To this we reply that, if it be the true construction, its harshness is no concern of the courts. They have no responsibility for the justice or wisdom of legislation, and no duty except to enforce the law as it is written, unless it is clearly beyond the constitutional power of the law-making body. * * * It is quite conceivable that Congress, contemplating the inevitable hard ship of such injuries, and hoping to- diminish”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Lehigh Valley R. v. Beltz

2. ““Every common carrier by railroad while engaging in commerce between any of the several states or territories, or between the District of Columbia and any of the states or territories, or between the District of Columbia or any of the states or territories and any foreign nation or nations, shall be liable in damages to any person suffering injury while he is employed by such carrier in such commerce, or, in case of the death- of such employee, to his or her personal representative, for the benefit of the surviving widow or husband and children of such employee; and, if none, then of the next of kin dependent upon such employee, for such injury or death resulting in whole or in part from the negligence of any of the officers, agents, or employees of such earner, or by reason of any defect or insufficiency, due to its negligence, in its ears, engines, appliances, machinery, track, roadbed, works, boats, wharves, or other equipment [or due to the violation by such common carrier of any statute enacted for the benefit of employees].””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Central Vermont Ry. Co. v. Perry

3. ““Be it enacted by the Senate and Houee of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that on and after the first day of January, nineteen hundred and ten, it shall be unlawful for any common carrier engaged in intrastate or foreign commerce by railroad to use any locomotive in moving interstate or foreign traffic, not equipped with an ash pan, which can be dumped or emptied and cleaned without the necessity of any employee going under such locomotive.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Smithers v. Fort Worth & D. C. Ry. Co.