Gaddis v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1967
Citation profile
25 federal appellate · 160 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 205 later decisions — most recently July 2019 · most notably 43 Ill. 2d 54 - Rozny v. Marnul (1969), Borel v. Fibreboard Paper Products Corp. (1973)
25 federal appellate · 160 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.
Relationships
Applies 45 U.S.C. § 56 (Federal Employers' Liability Act)
Relies on Urie v. Thompson · Gulbenkian v. Penn · Great American Reserve Insurance Co. v. San Antonio Plumbing Supply Co. · Fambrough v. Wagley · Fernandi v. Strully
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 205 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he cause of action for the negligent leaving of a foreign object in a patient’s body by a physician accrues when the patient learns of, or, in the exercise of reasonable care and diligence, should have learned of the presence of such foreign object in his body.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“it is often difficult, if not impossible, to discover that a foreign object has been left within the body within the statutory period of limitation”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“[T]he question when a cause of action accrues is a judicial one, and to determine it in any particular case is to establish a general rule of law for a class of cases, which rule must be founded on reason and justice. In the absence of legislative definition and specification, the ... courts have often been called upon to delineate the statute; they have conscientiously sought to apply it with due regard to the underlying statutory policy of repose, without, however, permitting unnecessary individual injustices....”
2 later decisions 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.