Dillon's Case’s Empirical Analysis
1949
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 4 district · 42 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 49 later decisions — most recently March 2012 · most notably Heller v. Silverbranch Construction Corp. (1978), 6 Cal. 3d 719 - Mathews v. Workmen's Compensation Appeals Board (1972)
2 federal appellate · 4 district · 42 state decisions — followed in 10 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.
Relationships
Relies on McNicol's Case · Matter of Leonbruno v. . Champlain Silk Mills · Western Indemnity Co. v. Pillsbury · Meucci v. Gallatin Coal Co. · Claim of Verschleiser v. Joseph Stern & Son
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 49 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The striking of the first blow is not the sole and ultimate test as to whether the injury arose out of the employment. * * * We must constantly remind ourselves that in compensation cases fault is not a determining factor, whether it be that of the employee alone or that of the employee contributing with the fault of others, unless it amounts to the ‘serious and wilful misconduct’ of the employee which by § 27, as appearing in St.1935, c. 331, bars all relief to him. Apart from serious and wilful misconduct, the question is whether the injury occurred in the line of consequences resulting from the circumstances and conditions of the •employment, and not who was to blame for it. * * * So even where the employee himself strikes the first blow, that fact does not break the connection between the employment and -the injury, if it can be seen that the whole affair had its origin in the nature and conditions of the employment, so that the employment bore to it the relation of cause to effect. In the present case there was no evidence whatever of any friction between Dillon and Kenney except in connection with their work. It could reasonably be found that a smoldering enmity was engendered between these men by the carrying on of the employer’s work, the control which Dillon as gang leader had over Kenney, and the manner in which he exercised that control in his employer’s interest, and it could even be found that at the moment of the trouble Ken-ney was intentionally interfering wi”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Hall v. Clark
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.