St Paul Mercury Indemnity Co v. Red Cab Co’s Empirical Analysis
303 U.S. 283 · 1938
Citation profile
1,703 federal appellate · 1,401 district · 59 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 6,499 later decisions (65 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2025 · most notably Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle (1977), Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Commission (1977)
1,703 federal appellate · 1,401 district · 59 state decisions — followed in 16 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
reviewedSt. Paul Mercury Indemnity Co. v. Red Cab Co. (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on McNutt v. General Motors Acceptance Corp. · KVOS, Inc. v. Associated Press · Lion Bonding & Surety Co. v. Karatz · Wichita Light Co v. Public Untilities Commission of the State of Kansas
Cited together with McNutt v. General Motors Acceptance Corp. · Bell v. Preferred Life Assurance Society · Horton v. Liberty Mutual Insurance · Snyder v. Harris · Zahn v. International Paper Co.
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 6,499 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The rule governing dismissal for want of jurisdiction in cases brought in the federal court is that, unless the law gives a different rule, the sum claimed by the plaintiff controls if the claim is apparently made in good faith. It must appear to a legal certainty that the claim is really for less than the jurisdictional amount to justify dismissal.”
347 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“* * * It might happen that the judge, on the trial or hearing of a cause, would receive impressions amounting to a moral certainty that it does not really and substantially involve a dispute or controversy within the jurisdiction of the court. But upon such a personal conviction, however strong, he would not be at liberty to act, unless the facts on which the persuasion is based, when made distinctly to appear on the record, create a legal certainty of the conclusion based on them. Nothing less than this is meant by the statute when it provides that the failure of its jurisdiction, on this account, `shall appear to the satisfaction of said Circuit Court'.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“although, at the time of removal of a cause from a state court, the complaint disclosed an amount in controversy requisite to the federal court’s jurisdiction, a subsequent amendment, reducing the sum claimed to substantially less than that amount, necessitates remand to the state eourt.”
3 later decisions 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.