Helms v. Harris’s Empirical Analysis
1955
Citation profile
8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently January 1997
8 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.
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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Acts of self-defense or in defense of one's property have always been in accord with the public policy of Texas, and those persons having sufficient courage to so act legally enjoy the privilege. It is only when acts in self-defense or in defense of one's property are committed under circumstances where the actor should realize that such acts create an unreasonable risk of causing harm to innocent third parties that such third parties may subject the actor to liability.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“"In the first place, the plaintiff sustained no injury as result of the defendant's resistance of the robbery.... "In the second place, under the agreed statement of facts, the injury that the plaintiff did sustain was inflicted upon her intentionally by the bandit for causes unrelated to defendant's resistance to him. .. ."”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“no duty to accede to criminal demands should be imposed.... [Defendant bartender] was faced with two alternatives. He could either yield the right and privilege of protecting his property, or he could assert that same right and privilege by attempting to resist the crime being perpetrated upon him.”
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.