St. Louis & S. F. Ry. Co. v. Bennett’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

18 federal appellate · 1 state decisions

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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Trie scene of the accident was a spur track of the railway company, which extended from its main track at Van Burén, in the state of Arkansas, between two long lumber sheds that belonged to the Long-Bell Lumber Company. The platforms of these lumber sheds were about four feet high, and the space between them in which the cars ran upon this spur track was about sixteen feet wide. It was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon of a November day in 1893. A switching engine, with its crew, had entered the spur from the main track for the purpose of moving cars on the former, and the switch had been left open. There were about fourteen freight cars upon the spur track, and between the two sheds there was an opening between two of these cars which had been made before the switching engine came upon the track. This space was about twenty feet wide. In it the employés of the lumber company had placed a tramway, one end of which rested upon timbers under the platform upon one side of the took, and the other upon the platform upon the other side. When the railway company was not using the spur track, this tramway was used by the lumber company to enable its employes to transfer lumber across the track from one of its sheds to the other. Whenever a switching engine came upon this spur track to move cars, it had been the custom for those employés of the lumber company who happened to he nearest to the tramway to immediately jump down upon the railroad track in the space between the ears and. p”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. St. Louis & S. F. Ry. Co. v. Miles

2. ““While, as we have said in Railway Co. v. Curb, 13 C. C. A. 587 , 66 Fed. 519 , considerable latitude may be allowed to counsel in their criticism of the testimony of witnesses and of the evidence in their arguments to the jury, they ought not to indulge in extended discussion of questions not presented by the evidence, for the obvious purpose of exciting passion and prejudice, or in gross misstatements of the evidence, or in clearly erroneous declarations of the law when it has been announced by the court, which tend to deceive and mislead the jury and to prevent a fair and impartial trial of the case.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Union Pac. R. Co. v. Field

3. ““The only duty which a railroad company owes to those who, without its knowledge or consent, enter upon its tracks, not at a crossing or other like public place, is not wantonly and unnecessarily to inflict injury upon them after its employés have discovered them. It owes them no duty to keep a lookout for them before they are discovered, because they are unlawfully up on tho tracks, and the railroad company is not required to watch for violations of the law.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Texas & P. Ry. Co. v. Modawell