Davis v. Merrill’s Empirical Analysis
1922
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 34 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 55 later decisions — most recently November 2018 · most notably Commercial Business Systems, Inc. v. BellSouth Services, Inc. (1995), Martin v. Cavalier Hotel Corp. (1995)
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 34 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 The Philadelphia Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company v. Philip Quigley · Haehl v. Wabash Railroad · New Ellerslie Fishing Club v. Stewart · Maniaci v. Interurban Express Co. · Savannah Electric Co. v. Wheeler
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 55 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he test of the liability of the [employer] for the tortious act of the [employee] is not whether the tortious act itself is a transaction within the ordinary course of the business of the [employer], or within the scope of the [employee's] authority, but whether the service itself in which the tortious act was done was within the ordinary course of such business or within the scope of such authority.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the contention arose over the raising of the gates at a late hour of the night, a matter admittedly within the scope of the gateman’s employment and duty, and as an immediate result thereof, the gateman shot and killed the deceased. The two acts constitute parts of one and the same transaction.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Tremel v. Reid“arise wholly from some external, independent, and personal motive.”
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.