Burke v. . Witherbee’s Empirical Analysis
1885
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 78 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 86 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 1954 · most notably Washington Co v. McDade (1890), Richelieu & Ontario Navigation Co. v. Boston Marine Insurance (1890)
6 federal appellate · 78 state decisions — followed in 10 states
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
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 86 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Under such circumstances, can the defendants be charged with negligence? Were they bound to know more than every one else? Ought they to have perceived danger that was not visible to any one else, and which those whose lives were most exposed were not sufficiently wise or vigilant to foresee? It is a mistake for one to take his stand after an accident, and to impute responsibility from a view thus obtained. It is nearly always easy, after an accident has happened, to see how it could have been avoided.””
1 later decision 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.