Barker v. Clark’s Empirical Analysis
2000
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 52 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 56 later decisions — most recently December 2025 · most notably Madden v. Aldrich (2001), E-Z Cash Advance, Inc. v. Harris (2001)
4 federal appellate · 52 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 Edwards v. Stills · Arthur v. Zearley · Vanderpool v. Fidelity & Casualty Insurance · Giles v. City of New Haven · Kail v. State
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 56 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The doctrine of res ipsa loquitur was developed to assist in the proof of negligence where the cause of an unusual happening connected with some instrumentality in the exclusive possession and control of the defendant could not be readily established by the plaintiff. The theory was that since the instrumentality was in the possession of the defendant, justice required that the defendant be compelled to offer an explanation of the event or be burdened with a presumption of negligence.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“In order to invoke the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, a plaintiff must show that (1) the defendant owes a duty to the plaintiff to use due care; (2) the accident is caused by the thing or instrumentality under the control of the defendant; (3) the accident which caused the injury is one that, in the ordinary course of things would not occur if those having control and management of the instrumentality used proper care; and (4) there is an absence of evidence to the contrary.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[a] party is entitled to a jury instruction when it is a correct statement of the law and there is some basis in the evidence to support the giving of the instruction”
1 later decision 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.