Sisson v. Southern Ry. Co.’s Empirical Analysis
68 F.2d 403 · 1933
Citation profile
16 federal appellate · 13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 30 later decisions — most recently August 1970 · most notably 22 Cal. 2d 111 - Peri v. L.A. Junction Ry. (1943), Southern Ry. Co. v. Lambert (1935)
16 federal appellate · 13 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 Gilman v. Central Vermont Railway Co. · Trask v. Boston & Maine Railroad · 96 Ind. App. 535 - Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway Co. v. Gillespie · Philadelphia & Reading Railroad v. Dillon · Washington & Old Dominion Railway Co. v. Zell's Administrator
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 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The train was lawfully across the highway. The absence of lights on the train, or shown by the trainmen, or other signals to travelers of the presence of the train there is the negligence charged. It is not in itself negligence for a railroad company to allow a train of cars to remain a reasonable or lawful length of time across a highway. * * *. The absence of such lights or warning signals does not of itself prove that the company was negligent as to the plaintiffs. * * *. There was no statute or ordinance which required such lights or warning, or regulating the speed of or lights on the automobile. The trainmen and the driver of the automobile each had a right to presume that the other would act as a reasonable person under all the conditions and surroundings of the crossing until the contrary should appear. * * *. “Here, then, the railroad company had a right to assume that the plaintiffs would act in a reasonable way to avoid running into the train of box cars while it was lawfully standing across the highway. If the defendant’s trainmen had a right to assume that a reasonably careful man driving an automobile on a highway at night would use such lights and adopt such a rate of speed as that he could bring his machine to a standstill within the distance that he could plainly see by the lights on his machine a railroad box car twelve feet high standing across the highway motionless on a railroad track, and completely obstructing his passage along a straight unobstructed ”
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.