Thompson v. Bohlken’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 2 district · 46 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 54 later decisions — most recently September 2025 · most notably Molo Oil Co. v. River City Ford Truck Sales, Inc. (1998), Iddings v. Mee-Lee (1996)
1 federal appellate · 2 district · 46 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 Evans v. Otis Elevator Co. · Fabricius v. Montgomery Elevator Company · Wilson v. Nepstad · Stacy v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. · Friesen v. Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad
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.
“[t]he usual meaning assigned to "willful," "wanton" or "reckless," according to taste as to the word used, is that the actor has intentionally done an act of an unreasonable character in disregard of a risk known to him or so obvious that he must be taken to have been aware of it, and so great as to make it highly probable that harm would follow.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage“(1) knowledge of the peril to be apprehended; (2) knowledge that injury is a probable, as opposed to a possible, result of the danger; and (3) a conscious failure to avoid the peril.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage“caused by the other employee's gross negligence amounting to such lack of care as to amount to wanton neglect for the safety of another.”
8 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.