Saunders v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1961
Citation profile
19 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently September 1991
19 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 Marable v. State · Cooper v. State · 2 Smith & H. 633 - Keller v. State · 8 Smith & H. 23 - Davis v. State · 1 Smith & H. 7 - Copeland v. State
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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“‘ Ordinarily, intent to injure is the gist of an assault. Richels v. State, 33 Tenn. 606 . A specific intent though to do an injury is not necessary to constitute assault and battery where the act complained of is malum in se but general malevolence or recklessness will suffice. King v. State, 157 Tenn. 635 , 11 S.W.2d 904, 905 . In the King case, this Court quoted with approval Clark & Marshall on Crimes, as follows: ‘While there is very little authority on the question, there seems to be no good reason to doubt that a person may be guilty of criminal assault and battery if he intentionally does an act which, by reason of its wanton and grossly negligent character, exposes another to personal injury, and does in fact cause such injury. Throwing a stone in sport and striking another is an assault and battery.’ “The basic contention on this appeal is that there is no evidence of any intent to do injury. The intent necessary to constitute assault and battery is either an express desire upon the part of the accused to inflict the injury or it can be supplied as a matter of law from doing an act in such a reckless and wanton manner that the natural and probable results thereof will be to inflict an injury. The factual situation as presented in each case is a question for the jury to determine whether or not there is either an express desire, or from the acts within themselves the intent is shown.””
4 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.