Vatalaro v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis
1928
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 2 district · 23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 30 later decisions — most recently May 1966 · most notably Matter of Parchefsky v. Kroll Bros., Inc. (1935), Selby v. Kuhns (1963)
5 federal appellate · 2 district · 23 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 Burns's Case · Gray v. Boston Elevated Railway Co. · Purchase v. Seelye · McGarrahan v. New York, New Haven, & Hartford Railroad · Gold v. Boston Elevated Railway Co.
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 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The railroad company could not be held liable because of the defendant's mistaken belief that he was operating upon some person other than the plaintiff; such a mistake was not an act of negligence which could be found to flow legitimately as a natural and probable consequence of the original injury, and a ruling in effect to the contrary could not properly have been made. * * * 12 "If a surgeon employed to operate upon a patient for hernia caused by the negligence of another, instead of performing that operation removes one of the patient's kidneys (which is in sound condition) under the mistaken belief that he is treating another patient, can it reasonably be held that such a mistake is something that might sometimes follow, and as a matter of common knowledge and experience might be expected sometimes to follow, from an injury resulting in hernia? We think not * * *.”
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.