Walker v. Harris’s Empirical Analysis
1996
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 1 district · 206 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 212 later decisions — most recently February 2019 · most notably County of Cameron v. Brown (2002), Rhone-Poulenc, Inc. v. Steel (1999)
1 federal appellate · 1 district · 206 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Texas Court of Appeals, 1st District (Houston))
Relationships
Relies on Nixon v. Mr. Property Management Co. · City of Houston v. Clear Creek Basin Authority · El Chico Corp. v. Poole · Greater Houston Transportation Co. v. Phillips · Centeq Realty, Inc. v. Siegler
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 212 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Foreseeability requires only that the general danger, not the exact sequence of events that produced the harm, be foreseeable.” When the “general danger” is the risk of injury from criminal activity, the evidence must reveal “specific previous crimes on or near the premises” in order to establish foreseeability. The foreseeability of an unreasonable risk of criminal conduct is a prerequisite to imposing a duty of care on a person who owns or controls premises to protect others on the property from the risk. Once this prerequisite is met, the parameters of the duty must still be determined. “Foreseeability is the beginning, not the end, of the analysis in determining the extent of the duty to protect against criminal acts of third parties.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“We have held that evidence of specific previous crimes on or near the premises may raise a fact issue on the foreseeability of criminal activity. Nixon, 690 S.W.2d at 550 . The [non-movants] did not bring forth any summary judgment evidence raising a fact issue on foreseeability. [[Image here]] This summary judgment evidence establishes that the [movants] had no reason to foresee the likelihood of violent criminal activity at their fourplexes. We hold that the [movants] established that the violent criminal act... was not foreseeable as a matter of law.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“As a rule, “a person has no legal duty to protect another from the criminal acts of a third person.” An exception is that “[o]ne who controls ... premises does have a duty to use ordinary care to protect invitees from criminal acts of third parties if he knows or has reason to know of an unreasonable and foreseeable risk of harm to the invitee.” ... [[Image here]] ... A duty exists only when the risk of criminal conduct is so great that it is both unreasonable and foreseeable.”
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.