Beck v. Wessel’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 28 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 30 later decisions — most recently February 2025 · most notably Voegeli v. Lewis (1977), Etheredge v. District of Columbia (1993)
2 federal appellate · 28 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 Burmeister v. Youngstrom · Weidner v. Lineback · Fossum v. Zurn · Dehnert v. Garrett Feed Company · Behrens v. Nelson
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 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“This case was tried to a jury at the courthouse in Mound City, South Dakota. Instructions were given to the jurors by the court and they began their deliberations at approximately 3:55 p.m. on May 16, 1974. At approximately 4:15 p.m. the jury sent a note to the judge asking, “Can you tell us the amount of insurance each party has?” The attorneys for the parties were not in the courtroom, having apparently adjourned to one of the local business establishments to await the verdict. Without attempting to locate the attorneys, the judge simply wrote “No” on the same piece of paper as the inquiry and returned the note to the jury room. Defendant argues that this was error and that because of it a new trial must be granted. He contends that the judge’s actions in answering the note were contrary to SDCL 15-6-51(a). The sixth paragraph of that section is the one which is relevant and it reads as follows: “After the jury have retired for deliberations if there be a disagreement between them as to any part of the testimony or if they desire to be informed of any point of law arising in the case, they may require the officer to conduct them into court. Upon their being brought into court the information required, if given, must be given in the presence of, or after notice to the parties or counsel, and the instruction given shall be taken down by the court reporter.” There is no doubt that in a technical sense the court erred in answering the note sent by the jury without consulting co”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Beck v. Townsend“We believe it abundantly clear that the right to contribution is determined by whether there is joint or several liability rather than by the presence of joint or concurring negligence. There can be no right to contribution unless the injured party has a possible remedy against two or more persons.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Bego v. Gordon
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.