Smith v. Clute’s Empirical Analysis
1938
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 33 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 37 later decisions — most recently September 1970 · most notably Babcock v. Jackson (1963), Blair v. Greene (1945)
2 federal appellate · 33 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 110 Cal. App. 81 - Crawford v. Foster · O'Brien v. Woldson · Kruy v. Smith · Sleeper v. Massachusetts Bonding & Insurance · Hart v. Hogan
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 37 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The question whether sharing expenses of an automobile trip results in such benefit to the owner or operator as to take a passenger out of the purview of a guest statute has been before the courts in a number of cases. Where there is no fixed understanding or agreement for sharing expenses, but merely a likelihood or a general statement by the passenger that he will pay his share, it is not sufficient . . ., and this court has so held. . . . On the other hand, where there is a definite agreement, as in the case at bar, a number of states have permitted recovery for ordinary negligence, holding the passenger who contributed toward the expenses was not a guest within the purview of the statute.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Morse v. . Walker
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.