Carter v. Atlanta & St. Andrews Bay Railway Co.’s Empirical Analysis
338 U.S. 430 · 1949
Citation profile
205 federal appellate · 14 district · 114 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 413 later decisions (40 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2020 · most notably Rogers v. Missouri Pacific Railroad (1957), Kernan v. American Dredging Co. (1958)
205 federal appellate · 14 district · 114 state decisions — followed in 17 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedCarter v. Atlanta & St. A. B. Ry. Co. (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Tiller v. Atlantic Coast Line Railroad · Wilkerson v. McCarthy · Ellis v. Union Pacific Railroad · O'Donnell v. Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway Co.
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 413 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““And Congress has directed liability if the injury resulted ‘in whole or in part’ from defendant’s negligence or its violation of the Safety Appliance Act. We made clear in Coray v. Southern Pacific Co., supra, 335 U.S. at 523, that if the jury determines that the defendant’s breach is a ‘contributory proximate cause’ of injury, it may find for the plaintiff.””
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“It shall be unlawful for any common carrier engaged in interstate commerce by railroad to haul or permit to be hauled or used on its line any car used in moving interstate traffic not equipped with couplers coupling automatically by impact, and which can be uncoupled without the necessity of men going between the ends of the ears.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Since 1893 the Congress has made it unlawful for a railroad company such as respondent to use any car on its line ‘not equipped with couplers coupling automatically by impact.’ This Court has repeatedly attempted to make clear that this is an absolute duty not based upon negligence, and that the absence of a ‘defect’ cannot aid the railroad if the coupler was properly set and failed to couple on the occasion in question. * * *””
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.