56 Ill. 2d 372 - Cunis v. Brennan’s Empirical Analysis
1974
Citation profile
20 federal appellate · 2 district · 340 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 399 later decisions — most recently March 2026 · most notably 136 Ill. 2d 132 - Ward v. K Mart Corp. (1990), 117 Ill. 2d 507 - Kirk v. Michael Reese Hospital & Medical Center (1987)
20 federal appellate · 2 district · 340 state decisions
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 Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co. · Larsen v. General Motors Corp. · Neering v. I.C.R.R. Co. · 54 Ill. 2d 539 - Mieher v. Brown · Evans v. General Motors Corp.
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 399 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"Necessary to any recovery based on the theory of common law negligence is the existence of a duty or an obligation requiring one to conform to a certain standard of conduct for the protection of another against an unreasonable risk. Whether under the facts of a case such a relationship exists between two parties as to require that a legal obligation be imposed upon one for the benefit of another is a question of law to be determined by the court. (Prosser, Handbook of the Law of Torts (4th ed. 1971), sec. 37.)"”
13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"It is better to reserve `duty' for the problem of the relation between individuals which imposes upon one a legal obligation for the benefit of the other, and to deal with particular conduct in terms of a legal standard of what is required to meet the obligation. In other words, `duty' is a question of whether the defendant is under any obligation for the benefit of the particular plaintiff; and in negligence cases, the duty is always the same, to conform to the legal standard of reasonable conduct in light of the apparent risk. What the defendant must do, or must not do, is a question of the standard of conduct required to satisfy the duty. The distinction is one of convenience only, and it must be remembered that the two are correlative, and one cannot exist without the other. A duty, in negligence cases, may be defined as an obligation, to which the law will give recognition and effect, to conform to a particular standard of conduct toward another." (Emphasis added.) W. Prosser, Torts, at 324 (4th ed.1971).”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“. “A possessor of land who creates or permits to remain thereon an excavation or other artificial condition so near an existing highway that he realizes or should realize that it involves an unreasonable risk to others accidentally brought into contact with such condition while traveling with reasonable care upon the highway, is subject to liability for physical harm thereby caused to persons who (a) are traveling on the highway, or (b) foreseeably deviate from it in the ordinary course of travel.” Restatement (Second) of Torts §368 (1965).”
4 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.