Mellen v. Morrill’s Empirical Analysis
1879
Citation profile
1 district · 30 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions — most recently October 1949 · most notably Ahern v. . Steele (1889), Clifford v. Atlantic Cotton Mills (1888)
1 district · 30 state decisions — followed in 12 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
Relies on Carleton v. Franconia Iron & Steel Co. · Leonard v. Storer
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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“He (the defendant) had leased it to a tenant, and there is nothing to show that he retained any control over the walk, or any right to direct the purposes for which the premises should be used. The fact that the walk was in the same condition before the demise is not material. The defendant did not guarantee that the premises should be safe for all the uses to which the tenant might put them. The tenant alone had the right to determine the purposes for which he would use the premises. If he used them so as impliedly to invite people to visit them in the night, it was his duty to make them safe by a railing, or by a light, or other warning. It was not the duty of the landlord, and indeed he would not have the right without the consent of the tenant, to do this.”
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.