Fleming v. Wal-Mart, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 11 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently September 2011
5 federal appellate · 11 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 Munzert v. American Stores Co. · Smith v. McEachin · Industrial Park Businessmen's Club, Inc. v. Buck · 176 Cal. App. 2d 694 - Sparks v. Allen Northridge Market · 46 N.J. Super. 394 - Francois v. American Stores 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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“it must be emphasized that `a store owner is not an insurer of its customers' safety. Certainly, [when] . . . a customer is injured by an independent act of negligence which the merchant cannot reasonably be expected to foresee or guard against, the merchant is not liable. However, ordinary and foreseeable activities of patrons, not amounting to independent acts of negligence, should not result in injury to fellow patrons or themselves; and a merchant is negligent if he has so arranged his merchandise that such activities can cause merchandise to fall resulting in injury.'”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“Absent some evidence of customer abuse or some other unforeseeable or uncontrollable event, which would explain the occurrence in question without negligence on the part of the defendant, it is only logical to conclude that the cabinet fell as the result of the negligence of Wal-Mart, and the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur is applicable. The burden of going forward with the evidence was thus shifted to the defendant at the close of plaintiff’s case, and the verdict should not have been directed.”
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.