Wheeler v. O'Connell’s Empirical Analysis
1937
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 47 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 54 later decisions — most recently February 2010 · most notably Continental Casualty Co. v. Phoenix Construction Co. (1956), Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company v. Roberts (1964)
5 federal appellate · 47 state decisions — followed in 12 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 Opinion of the Justices to the Senate & the House of Representatives · Slocum v. Metropolitan Life Insurance · Miller v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co. · Reagan v. Union Mutual Life Insurance · Sontag v. Galer
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 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[If the purpose of the statute is to compensate the injured party rather than to save the operator of the vehicle from loss, it is difficult to see why an injured person's rights should be affected by the fact that the operator's conduct was wilful, ... as distinguished from negligent.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“if the policy under consideration had contained an express exception against liability for injuries caused by the wilful conduct of the operator, such a policy would be in violation of (a further section of Massachusetts insurance law), as containing an exception or exclusion 'as to specified accidents or injuries or causes thereof.'”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The statute itself is declaratory of public policy applicable to compulsory insurance and supersedes any rule of public policy which obtains in ordinary insurance law.”
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.