McDermott v. Burke’s Empirical Analysis
1912
Citation profile
54 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 58 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 1986 · most notably United Zinc & Chemical Co. v. Britt (1922), Wagner v. Kepler (1951)
54 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 City of Pekin v. McMahon · Seymour v. Union Stock Yards & Transit Co. · St. Louis, Vandalia & Terre Haute R. R. v. Bell
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 58 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is a necessary element of the liability that the thing which causes the injury is tempting to children and to constitute a means of attracting them upon the premises which the owner should anticipate. The dangerous thing must be so located as to attract them from the street or some public place where they may be expected to be. 'An owner would not be liable if he maintained something for his own use which might be dangerous but which would only be found by children going upon his premises as trespassers.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It is an unquestioned general rule that the owner and occupier of private grounds is under no obligation to keep them in any particular state or condition to promote the safety of trespassers, intruders, idlers, bare licensees, or others who come upon them without any invitation, either express or implied; and this general rule applies equally to adults and children. . . . Under our decisions, which are most liberal to children, if the conditions are such that the owner may reasonably anticipate that children of such tender age as to be incapable of exercising proper care for their own safety may by their own instincts be attracted to the dangerous thing and thereby exposed to danger, he will be liable for an injury to a child so attracted, resulting from leaving the machine or dangerous thing exposed. Under such circumstances he would have good reason to expect that children, from their well known habits and nature, would be attracted to the dangerous thing, and its maintenance would amount to an implied invitation to them, so that they cannot be regarded as voluntary trespassers.””
1 later decision 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.