Wright v. Yackley’s Empirical Analysis
459 F.2d 287 · 1972
Citation profile
19 federal appellate · 13 district · 38 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 91 later decisions — most recently September 2025 · most notably Wells Fargo & Co. v. Wells Fargo Express Co. (1977), Sinatra v. National Enquirer, Inc. (1988)
19 federal appellate · 13 district · 38 state decisions — followed in 19 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
Relies on International Shoe Co. v. Washington · Hanson v. Denckla · McGee v. International Life Insurance · 22 Ill. 2d 432 - Gray v. American Radiator & Standard Sanitary Corp. · Aftanase v. Economy Baler 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 91 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In the case of personal services focus must be on the place where the services are rendered, since this is the place of the receiver’s (here the patient’s) need. The need is personal and the services rendered are in response to the dimensions of that personal need. They are directed to no place but to the needy person herself. It is in the very nature of such services that their consequences will be felt wherever the person may choose to go. However, the idea that tortious rendition of such services is a portable tort which can be deemed to have been committed wherever the consequences foreseeably were felt is wholly inconsistent with the public interest in having services of this sort generally available.”
29 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"[i]f [the doctor] was guilty of malpractice, it was through acts of diagnosis and prescription performed in South Dakota. The mailing of the prescriptions to Idaho did not constitute new prescription. It was not diagnosis and treatment by mail. It was simply confirmation of the old diagnosis and prescription and was recognized by the druggist as such. It did, of course, put the doctor on notice that consequences of his South Dakota services would be felt in Idaho and that it was by his very act of mailing that this would be made possible. In our view, however, this does no more than put the doctor in the position of one who, in South Dakota, treats an Idaho resident with knowledge of her imminent return to Idaho and that his treatment thus may cause effects there. "”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The balance of factors involved in a due process determination might be different if a doctor could be said to have treated an out-of-state patient by mail or to have provided a new prescription or diagnosis in such fashion. In that event, the forum state’s interest in deterring such interstate medical service would surely be great. Here, however, the mailing of the copies was simply reflective of, and indeed a part of, the earlier treatment and prescription.” Wright v. Yackley, 459 F.2d at 289 n.4.”
5 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.