Comstock v. Wilson’s Empirical Analysis
1931
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 50 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 59 later decisions — most recently October 1996 · most notably Schmidt v. Merchants Despatch Transportation Co. (1936), Battalla v. State (1961)
4 federal appellate · 50 state decisions — followed in 13 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 Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co. · Spade v. Lynn & Boston Railroad · 5 E.H. Smith 107 - Mitchell v. . Rochester Railway Co. · Homans v. Boston Elevated Railway Co. · Warren v. Boston & Maine 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 59 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Plaintiff’s automobile, in which the plaintiff’s testatrix was a passenger, came into collision with an automobile operated by the defendant. The collision caused some noise or ‘grating sound.’ The left fender of plaintiff’s car was loosened from the running board. The plaintiff’s testatrix stepped from the automobile and started to write down the defendant’s name and license number. While doing so, she fainted and fell to the sidewalk, fracturing her skull. All this occurred within a few minutes after the accident. She lived about twenty minutes after the fall. The plaintiff, claiming that the death of his testatrix was the result of defendant’s negligence, has recovered judgment for $5,000 against her. “The trial judge submitted to the jury, as a question of fact, whether the alleged negligence of the defendant was the proximate cause of the death of plaintiff’s testatrix. He refused the defendant’s request to charge that, ‘if the Jury find that the deceased at the time of the collision sustained only shock or fright, without physical injury, they must find for the defendant.’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“'[I]n actions of negligence damage is of the very gist and essence of the plaintiff's cause.'”
1 later decision 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.