Butler v. Whiteman’s Empirical Analysis
1958
Citation profile
155 federal appellate · 7 district · 44 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 277 later decisions (15 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2017 · most notably McDermott International, Inc. v. Wilander (1991), Chandris, Inc. v. Latsis (1995)
155 federal appellate · 7 district · 44 state decisions — followed in 13 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
reviewedthe decision below (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Rogers v. Missouri Pacific Railroad · Ferguson v. St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Co. · South Chicago Coal & Dock Co. v. Bassett · Ferguson v. Moore-McCormack Lines, Inc. · Schulz v. Pennsylvania Railroad
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 277 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a seaman and member of the crew of the tug within the meaning of the Jones Act.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“it taxes imagination to the breaking point to consider this unfortunate individual to have been a seaman at the time of the accident within the meaning of the Jones Act ....”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.