McGhee v. McCarley’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate ·

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 3 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “. An application for rehearing having been made by the defendant in error, and, the same having been granted, the causé has been fully reargued, and the court has again carefully considered it. The single error heretofore found by this court in the cause was that the trial court refused to charge the jury that only compensatory, and not punitive, damages were recoverable in the cause. On the first hearing of this cause the argument and the briefs treated very imperfectly, and in an unintentionally misleading manner, the matter of the statute law upon which this cause was based. Assisted by the argument and briefs on the rehearing, the court has carefully re-examined the point upon which it ordered tills cause to be remanded, and has concluded that the statute law of Alabama permits a personal representative to recover punitive damages in such a cause as the one at bar, and that therefore it is not within the doctrine of Railway Co. v. Prentice, 147 U. S. 101 , 13 Sup. Ct 261 , 37 L. Ed. 97 . The court has also re-examined the other questions involved in this cause, and finds no error in the causo. It is therefore ordered that the former order of this court, reversing the .”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Sloss-Sheffield Steel & Iron Co. v. Drane

2. ““The section of the Code, under which the plaintiff has brought this suit, says that the plaintiff shall recover ‘such damages as the jury may assess,’ and In that sense, by the letter of the statute under which this suit is framed, the assessment of damages is loft to the jury, but it is left to the jury under the control of the law, and under the control of the court, and an excessive verdict produced by appeals to passion, or to prejudice, or to sympathy would of necessity have to he set aside or reduced by the court. I do not say to you In this case that the amount of damages should be limited to the amount of wages or earnings that this lad might have made from the time of the accident to the time he reached his majority. I do not say to you that there is such a limit The plaintiff can recover ‘such damages as the jury-may assess,’ and you should have regard to all the facts and circumstances of the case which have been so well discussed by counsel, not being Influenced by any appeal to passion, sympathy, or feeling. We sit here to decide the ease, all of us, according to the proper rules of justice between the parties.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Sloss-Sheffield Steel & Iron Co. v. Drane