Shaffer v. Union Brick Co.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 2 district ·

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

1. ““Hence, the question ⅛ whether, when a master is held liable for the negligence of his servant in his absence, which negligence he did not direct, he can be said to have acted in concert with the servant to produce the injury in such a way as that he and the servant can be held-liable in the joint action. Clearly not. His liability does not arise from any common purpose that he had with the servant, or from any actual unity of action between them, in point of time and effect, or otherwise. His liability arises simply and solely from the policy of the law, which makes him responsible for the acts of his servants done in the discharge of his business. The rule by which he is held is usually referred to as the rule of respondeat superior, which, says Hr. Pollock, in his work on Torts (4th Ed., p. 70), ‘is a dogmatic statement, not an explanation.’ * * ⅜ It will thus be seen that the master is not held on any theory that he personally interferes to cause the injury. It .is simply on the ground of public policy which requires that he shall be held responsible for the acts of those whom he employs done in and about his business even though such acts are directly in conflict with the orders which he had given them on the subject. The liability of the servant, on the other; hand, arises wholly because of his personal act in doing the wrong. It does not grow out of the relation of master and servant, and tloes hot exist at all, unless it would also exist' for the same act when committ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Armstrong v. Kansas City Southern Ry. Co.

2. ““It is manifestly both, unsafe and unsound to allow the ultimate determination of the right ot removal from the state to the federal courts to rest upon the ingenuity of counsel drafting the pleadings; for, as said by Air. Justice Miller in Board of County Com'rs v. Kansas Pac. Ry. Co., 4 Dill. 277 [Fed. Cas. No. 502]: ‘It would be a very dangerous doctrine — one utterly destructive of the right which a man has to go into the federal courts on account of his citizenship — if the plaintiff in the ease, in instituting his suit, can, without any right or reason or just cause join persons who hare not the requisite citizenship, and thereby destroy the lights of parties in federal courts. We must, therefore, be astute not to permit devices to become successful which are used for the very purpose of destroying that right.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Clark v. Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. Co.