Byrd v. Blue Ridge Rural Electric Cooperative, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
1958
Citation profile
1,124 federal appellate · 200 district · 75 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,275 later decisions (39 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Fay v. Noia (1963), Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore (1979)
1,124 federal appellate · 200 district · 75 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
reviewedBlue Ridge Rural Electric Cooperative, Inc. v. Byrd (from Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1332 (Class Action Fairness Act of 2005) · 45 U.S.C. § 51 (Federal Employers' Liability Act)
Relies on Erie Co v. Tompkins · Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp. · Klaxon Co. v. Stentor Electric Manufacturing Co. · Guaranty Trust Co. v. York · Crowell v. Benson
Cited together with Erie Co v. Tompkins · Hanna v. Plumer · Guaranty Trust Co. v. York · Woods v. Interstate Realty Co. · Simler v. Conner
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 2,275 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“affirmative countervailing considerations”
48 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“intended to be bound up with the . . . rights and obligations of the parties”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he question is not whether a statute of limitations is deemed a matter of “procedure” in some sense. The question is whether such a statute concerns merely the manner and the means by which a right to recover, as recognized by the State, is enforced, or whether such statutory limitation is a matter of substance in the aspect that alone is relevant to our problem, namely, does it significantly affect the result of a litigation for a federal court to disregard a law of a State that would be controlling in an action upon the same claim by the same parties in a State court? ... In essence, the intent of [the Erie] decision was to insure that, in all cases where a federal court is exercising jurisdiction solely because of the diversity of citizenship of the parties, the outcome of the litigation in the federal court should be substantially the same, so far as legal rules determine the outcome of a litigation, as it would be if tried in a State court.”
6 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.