Sinkler v. Missouri Pacific Railroad’s Empirical Analysis
1958
Citation profile
236 federal appellate · 35 district · 148 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 565 later decisions (23 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably Consolidated Rail Corporation v. Gottshall (1994), Shenker v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (1963)
236 federal appellate · 35 district · 148 state decisions — followed in 23 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
Applies 45 U.S.C. § 51 (Federal Employers' Liability Act) · 45 U.S.C. § 53 (Federal Employers' Liability Act) · 45 U.S.C. § 54 (Federal Employers' Liability Act)
Relies on Urie v. Thompson · Rogers v. Missouri Pacific Railroad · Tiller v. Atlantic Coast Line Railroad · Ferguson v. St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Co. · Kernan v. American Dredging 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 565 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a railroad worker may recover from his employer for an injury caused in whole or in part by a fellow worker, not because the employer is himself to blame, but because justice demands that one who gives his labor to the furtherance of the enterprise should be assured that all combining their exertions with him in the common pursuit will conduct themselves in all respects with sufficient care that his safety while doing his part will not be endangered. If this standard is not met and injury results, the worker is compensated in damages.”
13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““In the present case the respondent [Missouri Pacific] rather that doing the necessary switching incident to its business in the Houston Terminal area, arranged that the Belt Railway should supply the crews and equipment to perform this operation on its behalf. But the evidence clearly es tablishes that the respondent’s trains, when under the control of the Belt Railway’s switching crews, were being handled to further the task of the respondent’s enterprise. While engaged in switching and handling respondent’s cars and trains about the terminal area, the Belt Railway employees on the job were, for purposes of the FELA, as much a part of the respondent’s total enterprise as was the petitioner while engaged in his regular work on the respondent’s car. “It is manifest that the corporate autonomy of the Belt Railway, and its freedom from detailed supervision of its operations by respondent, are irrelevant inasmuch as the switching crew of the Belt Railway Company at the moment of the collision in the station was engaged in furthering the operational activities of respondent. We therefore hold that when a railroad employee’s injury is caused in whole or in part by the fault of others performing, under contract, operational activities of his employer, such others are ‘agents’ of the employer within the meaning of § 1 of FELA.””
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“response to the special needs of railroad workers who are daily exposed to the risks inherent in railroad work and are helpless to provide adequately for their own safety.”
10 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.