Kanawha & Michigan Railway Co. v. Kerse’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

50 federal appellate · 4 district · 71 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 129 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Every common carrier by railroad while engaging in commerce between any of the several States or Territories, or between any of the States and 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 sneh employee’s parents; 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 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.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 244 Ill. App. 441 - Beck v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad

2. ““A judgment is not to be reversed for an error by which the plaintiff in error cannot have been prejudiced. And the refusal of an instruction as to the legal result that would follow only upon the hypothesis that the deceased knew of the presence of the timber, and knew it would not clear a man standing upon the top of a box car, became legally insignificant when the jury had in its findings distinctly negatived the facts that made up the hypothesis. Thus the progress of the trial rendered the error wholly immaterial to the merits. Greenleaf’s Lessee v. Birth, 5 Pet. 132 , 135 [ 8 L. Ed. 72 ]; Fidelity & Deposit Co. v. Courtney, 186 U. S. 342 , 351 [ 22 Sup. Ct. 833 , 46 L. Ed. 1193 ].””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Clark v. Erie R.

3. ““Since knowledge of a fixed obstruction over the track in such a position as not to clear a man standing upon the top of a box car would seem necessarily to import to an experienced brakeman that there was a risk of injury to him in that situation, and since'there was no evidence of objection by Barry [plaintiff] oy promise of reparation by his employer to rebut the presumption that the risk was assumed, the refusal of this request appears plainly erroneous.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Kempe v. Illinois Central Railroad