Thomas v. Harrington’s Empirical Analysis
1903
Citation profile
9 federal appellate · 1 district · 24 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 34 later decisions — most recently February 2016 · most notably 32 Tenn. App. 425 - International Harvester Co. v. Sartain (1948), Kambour v. Boston & Maine Railroad (1913)
9 federal appellate · 1 district · 24 state decisions — followed in 11 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 Robbins v. Chicago City · Woodman v. Metropolitan Railroad · Norwalk Gaslight Co. v. Borough of Norwalk · Water Company v. Ware · Gorham v. Gross
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 34 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““There is an obvious difference between committing work to a contractor to be executed from which, if properly done, no injurious consequences can arise, and handing over to him work to be done from which mischievous consequences will arise unless preventive measures are adopted. While it may be just to hold the party authorizing the work in the former case exempt from liability for injury, resulting from negligence which he had no reason to anticipate, there is, on the other hand, good ground for holding him liable for injury caused by an act certain to be attended with injurious-consequences if such consequences are not in fact prevented, no matter through -whose default the omission to take the necessary measures for such precaution may arise.””
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.