Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Semmes’s Empirical Analysis
1890
Citation profile
24 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently February 1999
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.
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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Nor have we the means of ascertaining whether the plaintiffs would have brought the suit to a successful issue, if it had not been settled. That could be shown with legal certainty only by the judgment of the tribunal charged with the decision of the case.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. McPhail v. Spore““These cases are supported by a vast amount of authority, and they announce a doctrine eminently just and reasonable.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Palmer v. Brown
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.