Daniel v. Railroad’s Empirical Analysis
1904
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 33 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 37 later decisions — most recently December 1964 · most notably Winn & Lovett Grocery Co. v. Archer (1936), Jackson v. . Telegraph Co. (1905)
1 federal appellate · 33 state decisions — followed in 13 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.
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 37 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A servant entrusted with his master's goods may do what is necessary to preserve and protect them, because his authority to do so is clearly implied by the nature of the service; but when the property has been taken from his custody or stolen, and the crime has already been committed, it cannot be said that a criminal prosecution is necessary for its preservation or protection. This may lead to the punishment of the thief or the trespasser, but it certainly will not restore the property, or tend in any degree to preserve or protect it. It is an act clearly without the scope of the agency, and cannot possibly be brought within the limits of the implied authority of the agent. It would seem that so plain a proposition should need neither argument nor authority to support it, but we are abundantly supplied with both in the cases upon the subject. * * * 10 "`There is a marked distinction between an act done for the purpose of protecting the property by preventing a felony or of recovering it back, and an act done for the purpose of punishing the offender for that which has already been done. There is no implied authority in a person having the custody of property to take such steps as he thinks fit to punish a person who he supposes has done something with reference to the property which he has not done. The act of punishing the offender is not anything done with reference to the property. It is done merely for the purpose of vindicating justice.'”
2 later decisions 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.