Murphy v. Campbell’s Empirical Analysis
1998
Citation profile
12 federal appellate · 1 district · 95 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 130 later decisions — most recently September 2025 · most notably KPMG Peat Marwick v. Harrison County Housing Finance Corp. (1999), PPG Industries, Inc. v. JMB/Houston Centers Partners Ltd. Partnership (2004)
12 federal appellate · 1 district · 95 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, 3rd District (Austin))
Relationships
Relies on Willis v. Maverick · Computer Associates International, Inc. v. Altai, Inc. · Parkway Co. v. Woodruff · Houston Water Works v. Kennedy · Quinn v. Press
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 130 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We expressly limited the rule in Hughes to attorney malpractice in the prosecution or defense of a claim that results in litigation. In such circumstances, to require the client to file a malpractice claim against the lawyer representing him in another case would necessarily make it virtually impossible for the lawyer to continue his representation. The client’s only alternative would be to obtain other counsel. That consideration, coupled with the necessity of taking inconsistent positions, persuaded us to adopt a tolling rule in Hughes . We restricted it to the circumstances presented.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A] cause of action accrues when the plaintiff knows or reasonably should know that he had been legally injured by the alleged wrong, however slightly. The fact that the plaintiffs actual damages may not be fully known until much later does not affect the determination of the accrual date....”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“We have not applied [the legal injury] rule without exception, however, and have sometimes held that an action does not accrue until the plaintiff knew or in the exercise of reasonable diligence should have known of the wrongful act and resulting injury. S.V., 933 S.W.2d at 4 . This exception, which we call the ‘discovery rule’, applies in cases of fraud and fraudulent concealment, and in other cases in which ‘the nature of the injury incurred is inherently undiscoverable and the evidence of injury is objectively verifiable.’ Computer Assoc. Int’l, Inc. v. Altai, Inc., 918 S.W.2d 453, 456 (Tex.1996); S.V., 933 S.W.2d at 6 .”
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.