Willis v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently June 2009
2 federal appellate · 6 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 Illinois Power Co. v. Local Union No. 51, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers · Vance v. Schulder · Bodne v. Austin · 41 Tenn. App. 572 - Hall v. De Saussure · 42 Wash. 2d 590 - Cantrill v. American Mail Line, Ltd.
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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[fraudulent concealment of the cause of action by the defendant tolls the statute of limitations. It begins to run as of the time of the discovery of the fraud by the plaintiff ... [P]laintiff must prove that the defendant took affirmative action to conceal his cause of action and that he, the plaintiff, could not have discovered his cause of action despite exercising reasonable diligence.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Lentz v. Baker
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.