Sizemore v. Smock’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
4 district · 29 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions — most recently February 2025 · most notably Gallimore v. Children's Hospital Medical Center (1993), Reagan v. Vaughn (1991)
4 district · 29 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.
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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[WJhere the parent dies, compensation for loss of parental care and services can be recovered only through a wrongful death action. Whether or not this compensation encompasses recovery for the child’s loss of society and companionship in addition to more pecuniary items such as lost wages from which support would have been furnished, the availability of some reparation for disadvantage to the child and to the victim’s family furnishes a sufficient basis for allowing the child to recover for lost society and companionship in the case of a parent’s death but not in the case of parental injury.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Elgin v. Bartlett“Grandparents, siblings, and others with close emotional ties to a negligently injured plaintiff undoubtedly would be able to posit an argument just as logical and sympathetic as the parent or child for protection of their consortium interests by recognition of similar action in their favor.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The social consequences and economic burdens resulting to the public from recognition of an additional cause of action also persuade us that the line of liability should not be extended any further.”
1 later decision 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.