Watkins v. Davis’s Empirical Analysis
1957
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 25 later decisions — most recently January 2013 · most notably 222 Ill. 2d 422 - Marshall v. Burger King Corp. (2006), 10 Ill. App. 3d 276 - Ray v. Cock Robin, Inc. (1973)
2 federal appellate · 23 state decisions
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 Hopson v. Gulf Oil Corp. · City of Dallas v. Maxwell · Franklin v. Houston Electric Co. · Dallas Railway & Terminal Co. v. Hendrix · Jennison v. Darnielle
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 25 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"`It has been held in many cases that a wrongdoer is not responsible for a consequence which is merely possible, according to occasional experience, but only for a consequence which is probable, according to ordinary and usual experience. The natural and probable consequences are those which human foresight can foresee, because they happen so frequently that they may be expected to happen again.' * * * The weight of authority, which to our mind is in accord with sound principles, is to the effect that, where the injury to the traveler results from a loss of entire control and direction of an animal or machine, the occurrence falls within the demain of unusual and extraordinary; and therefore, in contemplation of law, of the unforeseeable."”
6 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.