Shenker v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad’s Empirical Analysis
1963
Citation profile
121 federal appellate · 11 district · 118 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 379 later decisions (10 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2020 · most notably Missouri v. Jenkins (1990), Kelley v. Southern Pacific Co. (1974)
121 federal appellate · 11 district · 118 state decisions — followed in 20 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
reviewedShenker v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (from Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 46 · 45 U.S.C. § 51 (Federal Employers' Liability Act)
Relies on Standard Oil Company v. Edward Anderson · Bailey v. Central Vermont Railway, Inc. · Ellis v. Union Pacific Railroad · Sinkler v. Missouri Pacific Railroad · Western Pac Corp v. Western Pac R Co Metzger
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 379 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a railroad has the nondelegable duty to provide its employees with a safe place to work even when they are required to go onto the premises of a third party over which the railroad has no control.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the rights of the litigant go no farther than the right to know the administrative machinery that will be followed. . . for this Court to hold otherwise would involve it unnecessarily in the internal administration of the Courts of Appeal.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Under the rationale and result of this case, a railroad would be liable for a defect which first appeared immediately prior to the injury for which recovery is sought and which even the most scrupulous kind of inspection procedure could neither have avoided nor detected. What the Court appears to have done is to create not simply a duty of inspection, but an absolute duty of discovery of all defects; in short, it has made the B & O the insurer of the condition of all premises and equipment, whether its own or others, upon which its employees may work. * * ””
2 later decisions 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.