Berry v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
312 U.S. 450 · 1941
Citation profile
144 federal appellate · 18 district · 33 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 296 later decisions (19 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2015 · most notably Galloway v. United States (1943), Cone v. West Virginia Pulp & Paper Co. (1947)
144 federal appellate · 18 district · 33 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedBerry v. United States (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Gunning v. Cooley · Slocum v. New York Life Insurance · Lumbra v. United States · Railroad Company v. Stout · Baltimore & Carolina Line, Inc. v. Redman
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 296 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It was not necessary that petitioner be bedridden, wholly helpless, or that he should abandon every possible effort to work in order for the jury to find that he was totally and permanently disabled. It cannot be doubted that if petitioner had refrained from trying to do any work at all, and the same evidence of physical impairment which appears in this record had been offered, a jury could have properly found him totally and permanently disabled. And the jury could have found that his efforts to work — all of which sooner or later resulted in failure — were made not because of his ability to work but because of his unwillingness to live a life of idleness, even though totally and permanently disabled within the meaning of his policies.””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"`... The word "total" as applied to "disability" does not necessarily mean incapacitated to do any work at all. The word "continuously" means with reasonable regularity. It does not preclude periods of disability which are ordinarily incident to activities of persons in generally sound health, for nearly all persons are at times temporarily incapacitated by injuries, or poor health, from carrying on their occupations. If Berry was able to follow a gainful occupation only spasmodically, with frequent interruptions, due to his injuries, and his shock, he was totally disabled. A disability is permanent when it is of such a nature that it is reasonably certain it will continue throughout a person's life-time.'" (Emphasis added.) (p. 455, footnote 7.)”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the court is deemed to have submitted the action to the jury subject to a later determination of the legal questions raised by the motion.”
2 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.