Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Johnson’s Empirical Analysis
91 F.2d 332 · 1937
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently May 1998
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 8 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 A. B. Small Co. v. Lamborn & Co. · Bennett v. Railroad Co. · S. S. Kresge Co. v. Fader · Miller v. Gimbel Bros., Inc. · F. W. Woolworth Co. v. Williams
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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘If what was shown in this case was sufficient to permit recovery, it would require store owners to have a mopper stationed at the doors on rainy days for the sole purpose of mopping up after every customer entering or leaving the premises. Every store owner would be required to be an insurer against such accidents to public invitees who came in on rainy days with wet shoes.’ ””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““A store owner was not an insurer of safety of customer who slipped on floor, but only owed duty to customer, as a business invitee, to exercise reasonable care to keep premises in reasonably safe and suitable condition so that when customer entered store upon invitation, she would not be necessarily or unreasonably exposed to danger. “A customer who slipped on allegedly wet floor at top of poorly lighted stairway leading to basement in defendant’s store had burden to establish defendant’s negligence and to show that defendant did not perform its duty to exercise reasonable care to protect customer as an invitee from injury while in store. “That customer may have slipped on floor in defendant’s store did not shift to defendant burden of establishing that accident did not occur through its negligence, nor create presumption of negligence. “The presumption is that store owner exercised reasonable care as respects liability for injury to customer who slipped on floor. “A customer could not recover from store owner for injuries sustained in slipping on allegedly wet floor at top of poorly lighted stairway in absence of introducing sufficient evidence to make issue that customer slipped through negligence of owner’s employees, or because of conditions of which owner had notice in time to remove cause by mopping or other reasonable means.” In the opinion we find this language: 1 "‘The fact that invitee may have slipped on the floor of the store did not shift to defendant burden of ”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““The owner of a store must take reasonable care that his customers shall not be exposed to danger of injury through conditions in the store or at the entrance which he invites the public to use. He cannot prevent some water and mud being brought into an entranceway on a rainy day and he is not responsible for injuries caused thereby unless it is shown that the construction of the store is inherently dangerous or that he failed to use care to remedy conditions which had become dangerous, after actual or constructive notice of such conditions. ’ ’”
1 later decision 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.