Chicago Ry Co v. Bolle’s Empirical Analysis
284 U.S. 74 · 1931
Citation profile
36 federal appellate · 3 district · 110 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 178 later decisions (17 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2000 · most notably McLeod v. Threlkeld (1943), Overstreet v. North Shore Corp. (1943)
36 federal appellate · 3 district · 110 state decisions — followed in 18 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 Swift Company v. United States · New York Central Railroad Company v. Sarah White · Pedersen v. Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad · Chicago Burlington Quincy Railroad Company v. Margaret Harrington · Shanks v. Delaware, Lackawanna & Western 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 178 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It will be observed that the word used in defining the -test is ‘transportation,’ not the word ‘commerce.’ The two words were not regarded as interchangeable, but as conveying different meanings. Commerce covers the whole field of which transportation is only a part; and the word of narrower signification was chosen understandingly and deliberately as the appropriate term. The business of a railroad is not to carry on commerce generally. It is engaged in the transportation of persons and things in commerce; and hence the test of whether an employee at the time of his injury is engaged in interstate commerce, within the meaning of the act, naturally must be whether he was engaged in interstate transportation, or in work so closely related to such transportation as to be practically a part of it.””
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Since the decision in the Shanks Case, the test there laid down has been steadily adhered to, and never intentionally departed from or otherwise stated. * * * In Illinois C. R. Co. v. Cousins, 241 U. S. 641 , 60 L. Ed. 1216 , 36 St. Ct. 446, as appears from the decision of the state court ( 126 Minn. 172 , 148 N. W. 58 [6 N. C. C. A. 182]), an employee was engaged in wheeling a barrow of coal to heat the shop in which other employees were at work repairing cars that had been, and were to be, used in' interstate traffic. The state court held that the employee came within the act, on the ground that the work which he was doing was a part of the interstate commerce in which the carrier was engaged, and cited Pedersen v. Delaware, L. & W. E. Co., 229 U. S. 146 , 57 L. Ed. 1125 , 33 S. Ct. 648 , Ann. Cas. 1914C, 153 (3 N. C. C. A. 779). This court, however, repudiated that view, and reversed in an opinion per curiam on the authority of the Shanks Case. In New York C. R. Co. v. White, 243 U. S. 188, 192 , 61 L. Ed. 667, 670 , L. R. A. 1917D, 1, 37 S. Ct. 247 , Ann. Cas. 1917D, 629 (13 N. C. C. A. 943), it was held, applying the test of the Shanks Case, that employment in guarding tools, intended for use in the construction of a new depot and tracks to be used in interstate commerce, had no such direct relation to interstate transportation as was contemplated by the Employers’ Liability Act (45 USCA secs. 51-59).””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Every common carrier by railroad while engaging in commerce . . . shall be liable in damages . . .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. McLeod v. Threlkeld
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.