Smith v. Steinkamp’s Empirical Analysis
318 F.3d 775 · 2003
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 1 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently March 2025
4 federal appellate · 1 district · 7 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
Applies 9 U.S.C. § 16 (Federal Arbitration Act)
Relies on Doctor's Associates, Inc. v. Casarotto · Weaver v. American Oil Company · Ferguson v. Countrywide Credit Industries, Inc. · McCaskill v. SCI Management Corp.
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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[I]f Instant Cash murdered Smith in order to discourage defaults and her survivors brought a wrongful death suit against Instant Cash..., Instant Cash could insist that the wrongful death claim be submitted to arbitration. For that matter, if an employee of Instant Cash picked Smith’s pocket when she came in to pay back the loan, and Smith sued the employee for conversion, he would be entitled to arbitration of her claim. It would make no difference that the conversion had occurred in Smith’s home 20 years after her last transaction with Instant Cash.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“A cynic might argue that, given the desperation of people who take out payday loans, these plaintiffs would have signed anything, so that relieving them from the duty to arbitrate gives them a windfall based on an oversight by Instant Cash. The defendants do not make this argument, however, perhaps fearing that it would invite a conclusion that payday loans are unconscionable and therefore unenforceable even in states that do not deem them usurious.”
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.