New York Life Insurance v. Gamer’s Empirical Analysis
303 U.S. 161 · 1938
Citation profile
136 federal appellate · 13 district · 96 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 307 later decisions (12 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2015 · most notably Bollenbach v. United States (1946), Galloway v. United States (1943)
136 federal appellate · 13 district · 96 state decisions — followed in 21 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedNew York Life Ins. v. Gamer (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Mobile Jackson Kansas City Railroad Company v. J a Turnipseed · Heiner v. Donnan · Central Vermont Railway Company v. Mary Theresa White L · Pritchard Ex'X v. Norton · Del Vecchio v. Bowers
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 307 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] presumption is not evidence and may not be given weight as evidence.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“is not evidence and ceases upon the introduction of substantial proof to the contrary. . . . The presumption is not evidence and may not be given weight as evidence.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Stripped of discussions of legal formulas designated as ‘presumptions’ and ‘burden of proof,’ the net result of the rule of ‘disappearing presumptions’ is that trial judges in Federal courts (irrespective of state rules) have the power to determine when sufficient ‘substantial evidence’ has been produced to justify taking from the jury the right to render a verdict on evidence which — had the judge not found it overcome by contradictory evidence — would have justified a verdict. The judge exercises this power as a ‘trier of fact’ al though evidence, previously introduced and sufficient to support a verdict, has neither been excluded nor withdrawn. “Proof of death by external and violent means has uniformly been held to establish death by accident. The extreme improbability of suicide is complete justification for a finding of death from accident under these circumstances. While it has been said that this proof of accidental death was based on ‘presumption,’ in reality— whatever words or formulas are used — what is meant is that a litigant has offered adequate evidence to establish accidental death. To attribute this adequacy of proof to a ‘presumption’ does not authorize or empower the judge to say that this ‘adequate proof’ (identical with legal ‘presumption’) has ‘disappeared.’ If the evidence offered by plaintiff provides adequate proof of accidental death upon which a jury’s verdict can be sustained, mere contradictory evidence cannot overcome the original ‘adequate proo”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.