15 Md. App. 1 - Brock v. Sorrell’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently January 2021
15 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 Commissioners of Marion County v. Clark · Fowler v. Smith · Ford v. Bradford · Delair v. McAdoo · Kantor v. Ash
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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Maryland has gone almost as far as any jurisdiction, to our knowledge, in holding that slight evidence of negligence may be sufficient to carry a case to the jury. Fowler v. Smith, 240 Md. 240 , 213 A.2d 549 (1965); Mazer v. Stedding, supra[, 10 Md.App. 505 , 271 A.2d 381 (1970)]. In Fowler v. Smith, supra, Chief Judge Prescott, speaking for the Court of Appeals, said: ‘The rule has been stated as requiring submission if there be any evidence, however slight, legally sufficient as tending to prove negligence, and the weight and value of such evidence will be left to the jury. Ford v. Bradford, 213 Md. 534 , 132 A.2d 488 . Cf. Bernardi v. Roedel, 225 Md. 17, 21 , 168 A.2d 886 . However, the rule as above stated does not mean, as is illustrated by the adjudicated cases, that all cases where questions of alleged negligence are involved must be submitted to a jury. They [sic] words ‘legally sufficient’ have significance. They mean that a party who has the burden of proving another party guilty of negligence, cannot sustain this burden by offering a mere scintilla of evidence, amounting to no more than surmise, possibility, or conjecture that such other party has been guilty of negligence, but such evidence must be of legal probative force and evidential value. State for Use of Balderston v. Hopkins, 173 Md. 321 , 196 A. 91 , and cases cited; Hevell v. Balto. Transit Co., 173 Md. 327 , 196 A. 103 ; Haddock v. Stewart, 232 Md. 139 , 192 A.2d 105 . Cf. Commissioners (etc.) v. Clark,”
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.