Lancaster v. Fitch’s Empirical Analysis
1923
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 47 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 49 later decisions — most recently June 2003 · most notably Crown Life Insurance Company v. Casteel (2000), Texas Power & Light Co. v. Hering (1949)
2 federal appellate · 47 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 Lake v. Atlantic Works
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 49 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The jury may have found for [plaintiff] on each of the two issues properly submitted. On the other hand, as authorized by the pleading and the charge of the court, they may have found for [plaintiff] only on the issue that was improperly submitted.... Under the court’s charge and under their oaths as jurors they were required to be governed by the charge. In order to hold the error harmless in the submission of the erroneous charge, we must hold that the jury disregarded the charge of the court. This we cannot do, but must presume that the jury in reaching its verdict gave full credit to this instruction and was governed by it.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“The jury may have found for [plaintiff] on each of the two issues properly submitted. On the other hand, as authorized by the pleading and the charge of the court, they may have found for [plaintiff] only on the issue that was improperly submitted. In order for courts to be able to administer the law in such cases with reasonable certainty and to lay down and maintain just and practical rules for determining the rights of parties, it is necessary that the issues made and submitted to juries, and upon which they are required to pass, be authorized and supported by the law governing the case.”
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.