Lather v. Berg’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 40 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 52 later decisions — most recently January 2021 · most notably Temporomandibular Joint Implants Products Liability Litigation Temporomandibular Joint Implant Recipients v. The Dow Chemical Company, McGee by and Through McGee v. Chalfant (1991)
5 federal appellate · 40 state decisions — followed in 10 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 Neal v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co. · Elder v. Fisher · Blessing v. United States · Patentas v. United States · 159 Ind. App. 663 - Brattain v. Herron
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 52 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] duty may be imposed upon one who by affirmative conduct ... assumes to act, even gratuitously, for another to exercise care and skill in what he has undertaken. It is apparent that the actor must specifically undertake to perform the task he is charged with having performed negligently, for without the actual assumption of the undertaking there can be no correlative legal duty to perform the undertaking carefully.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage“The statute forbids any person to "sell, barter, exchange, provide, or furnish an alcoholic beverage to a minor." IC 7.1-5-7-8 {emphasis supplied). It does not forbid any person to furnish money (emphasis in original) to a minor, even if the money is used to purchase alcoholic beverages. In the words of one court, "As an act cannot be regarded as negligence which one has a legal right to do, the furnishing of the money for the purchase of the whiskey would not be an action of negligence ... under the statute mentioned, because [the statute] does not penalize the act in question." Henry Grady Hotel Co. v. Sturgis (1943), 70 Ga.App. 379, 386 , 28 S.E.2d 329, 333 . While we acknowledge that Bailey may have supplied a preliminary link in the chain of events leading to Murphy's ultimate intoxication, we have found no legal basis on which to conclude that he violated the statute. Furnishing money for alcohol is not furnishing alcohol. Id.; see also Bennett [v. Letterly (1977), 74 Cal.App.3d 901 , 141 Cal.Rptr. 682 ] supra. Because Bailey had neither possession of nor control over the liquor itself, his conduct does not constitute furnishing alcohol to a minor in violation of IC 7.1-5-7-8.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“alcoholic beverages to another person by purchasing beverages on the other person's behalf, ... by knowingly allowing the other person to take the beverages from one's possession, ... by selling the beverages to a third person with knowledge that he intends to furnish them to the other person, ... or by buying the other person a drink.... In each of these cases, one person supplied alcoholic beverages to the other for his or her use. Each supplier was”
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.