Peterson v. Balach’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 180 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 193 later decisions — most recently February 2026 · most notably Nixon v. Mr. Property Management Co. (1985), Nelson v. Freeland (1998)
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 180 state decisions — followed in 31 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 Rowland v. Christian · Kermarec v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique · Great Northern Ry Co v. Sunburst Oil & Refining Co · Di Gildo v. Caponi · Pickard v. City and County of Honolulu
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 193 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he distinctions which the common law draws between licensee and invitee were inherited from a culture deeply rooted to the land, a culture which traced many of its standards to a heritage of feudalism.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage““A possessor of land is subject to liability for physical harm caused to licensees by a condition on the land if, but only if, (a) the possessor knows or has reason to know of the condition and should realize that it involves an unreasonable risk of harm to such licensees, and should expect that they will not discover or realize the danger, and (b) he fails to exercise reasonable care to make the condition safe, or to warn the licensees of the condition and the risk involved, and (c) the licensees do not know or have reason to know of the condition and the risk involved.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[T]he considerations governing a landowner’s or occupant’s liability to trespassers may be fundamentally different from his duty to those whom he has expressly or by implication invited onto his property. Burglars are trespassers; vandals are trespassers. * * * Sweeping away all distinction between trespassers and social guests and business invitees is a drastic step to take because there may be, and often is, good reason to distinguish between a trespasser and a social guest. There is little or no reason to distinguish between a social guest and a business invitee.”
2 later decisions 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.