Railroad Company v. Barron’s Empirical Analysis
72 U.S. 90 · 1866
Citation profile
41 federal appellate · 3 district · 69 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 152 later decisions (7 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2019 · most notably Michigan Central Railroad v. Vreeland (1913), Bell v. City of Milwaukee (1984)
41 federal appellate · 3 district · 69 state decisions — followed in 27 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.
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 152 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“‘■There can be no fixed measure of compensation for the pain and anguish of body and mind, nor for the loss of time and care in business, or the permanent injury to health and body."”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“fixed.” Barron concerned a state statute that provided a wrongful death cause of action to the deceased’s personal representative for the exclusive benefit of the widow and next of kin. The statute limited damages for “pecuniary injuries” under this cause of action to $5,000. The Court did not address the propriety of the damages cap; it held that the widow or next of kin need not have a valid claim of support from the deceased to recover under the statute. Id. at 106 . 6 . This court and the district court have referred to § 11-1-60(2)(b)’s application as a”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““We do not think it requisite to prove present actual pecuniary loss. It can rarely be done. The attempt to do it would substitute the opinion of witnesses for the conclusions of the jury. The facts proved will enable the jury to decide on the proper measure of responsibility. Some cases are harder than others, and the law intends that the jury shall discriminate in different cases. There is no fixed measure of damages, and no artificial rule by which the damages in a given case can be computed.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.