Stuart v. Pilgrim’s Empirical Analysis
1956
Citation profile
45 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 45 later decisions — most recently June 2018 · most notably Kiesau v. Bantz (2004), Briner v. Hyslop (1983)
45 state decisions
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 Christensen v. Hennepin Transportation Co. Inc. · Psota v. Long Island R.R. Co. · Pierce v. New York Central Railroad Company · Milgate v. Wraith · Virginia Railway & Power Co. v. Gorsuch
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 45 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[i]t is of the greatest importance that the law should be settled. Fairness to the trial courts, to the legal profession, and above all to citizens generally demands that interpretations once made should be overturned only for the most cogent reasons.... But this does not mean that [the law’s] forward progress should be over the dead bodies of slain and discarded precedents. Legal authority must be respected; not because it is venerable with age, but because it is important that courts, and lawyers and their clients, may know what the law is and order their affairs accordingly.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage“that the legislature intended to free a negligent third party who was involved in an accident with the car so driven by consent of its owner from such negligence, even though the consent driver of the first car was also negligent. The language of [section 321.493] clearly goes no farther than to place liability for actionable neghgence of the driver upon the owner. The question before us is one of statutory construction. [Section 321.493] says this, and this only: that when damage is done by any car by reason of the neghgence of a consent driver, “the owner of the ear shall be hable for such damage.” [Section 321.493] apphes only when damage has been done by the car, and only to such damage. We have by our decision[s] in ... other cases ... read into [section 321.493] something which is not there; that in addition to being hable for damage caused by the negligent driver of his car, the owner is also bound by the contributory neghgence of such driver if [the owner] attempts to recover for injuries to his car or to his person through the neghgence of a third party. The statute does not so say, and we are bound by its terms as well as by the rule of reason_ [Section 321.493] does not create a relationship of principal and agent; the owner is not hable because of an agency relation, but because [section 321.493] says so.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“It is evident that the principal-and-agent theory is unsound, and if followed finds in the statute something which is not there and leads to undesirable results. It is neither necessary nor wise to go beyond the language of the statute itself to determine its meaning, when its wording is clear.”
2 later decisions 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.