15 Va. App. 73 - Johnson v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

11 state decisions

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

1. “`may serve as the basis from which further inference of fact may be drawn,'”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Marketing Profiles, Inc. v. Hill · 17 Va. App. 431 - Marketing Profiles, Inc. v. Hill

2. “In a lengthy, persuasive analysis of the sharp divergence between “the text writers on the one hand, and the Courts on the other,” New York Life Ins. Co. v. McNeely, 79 P.2d 948, 954 (Ariz. 1938), the Supreme Court of Arizona observed: After a careful examination of both the cases and the texts, we are of the opinion that the divergence is more in the form of stating the rule than the application thereof. As Dean Wig-more has frequently pointed out in his monumental work, the rules of evidence applied by the courts are not, and never have been, governed strictly by the principles of logic as taught and applied in the schools. These principles are frequently modified or even set aside on account of practical reasons, which experience shows should govern the trial of controverted issues in the courts. It is true, of course, that in everyday life, all men frequently act as the result of the repeated piling of inferences upon inferences, and, as a matter of strict logic, if an inference has any probative value whatever in aiding one to determine the ultimate question of fact, it should be considered. The principle which is applied by the average man in his own private affairs usually is that no matter how many inferences are piled on each other, it is only necessary that each successive inference should be more probable than any other which might be drawn under all the circumstances. The courts, however, have always insisted that the life, liberty and property of a citizen should”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Johnson v. Shaffer