Williams v. Wilson’s Empirical Analysis
1998
Citation profile
7 federal appellate · 30 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 56 later decisions — most recently March 2019 · most notably United Parcel Service Co. v. Rickert (1999), Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. v. Golightly (1998)
7 federal appellate · 30 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 Flast v. Cohen · Harmelin v. Michigan · BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore · Kuntz v. City of Dayton · Pacific Mutual Life Insurance v. Haslip
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 56 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) As used in this section and KRS 411.186, unless the context requires otherwise: (a) “Oppression” means conduct which is specifically intended by the defendant to subject the plaintiff to cruel and unjust hardship. (b) “Fraud” means an intentional misrepresentation, deceit, or concealment of material fact known to the defendant and made with the intention of causing injury to the plaintiff. (c) “Malice” means either conduct which is specifically intended by the defendant to cause tangible or intangible injury to the plaintiff or conduct that is carried out by the defendant both with a flagrant indifference to the rights of the plaintiff and with a subjective awareness that such conduct will result in human death or bodily harm. ‡ ‡ ^ ^ ‡ ‡ (f) “Punitive damages” includes exemplary damages and means damages, other than compensatory and nominal damages, awarded against a person to punish and to discourage him and others from similar conduct in the future. (2) A plaintiff shall recover punitive damages only upon proving, by clear and convincing evidence, that the defendant from whom such damages are sought acted toward the plaintiff with oppression, fraud or malice. (5) This statute is applicable to all cases in which punitive damages are sought and supersedes any and all existing statutory or judicial law insofar as such law is inconsistent with the provisions of this statute.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“accompanied by wanton or reckless disregard for the lives, safety, or property of others.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Estep v. Combs · Crowe v. Johnson“upon a finding of gross negligence as measured by an objective standard”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.