Sanders v. Davis’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 43 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 45 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““In a case of action for false imprisonment, the defendant interposed a special plea, setting up an arrest by a policeman ‘having reasonable cause to believe that plaintiff was guilty.’ In support of the plea the argument was made that the arrest, having been made by the officer on reasonable cause, was a lawful arrest, and, the defendant having caused it, his liability was for malicious prosecution, and not for false imprisonment. This court said that the vice of the argument was in supposing that the rightfulness or lawfulness of the officer’s act could be predicated upon the command or direction of another procuring him to do the act, and that, ‘if he acts by the command or direction of another, and arrests and imprisons one upon a charge of a felony which has not been committed, or, if committed, the party commanding the arrest had no reasonable cause to believe was committed by the person arrested, the act is unlawful on the part of the officer himself, as well as the person who procured it.’ Rich v. McInerny, 103 Ala. 345, 355, 356 , 15 South. 663 , 49 Am. St. Rep. 32 . While the expressions of the court in the foregoing case are not entirely clear to the writer, yet they seem to present the dilemma that, if the officer acted on the command or direction of another, who had no ‘reasonable cause,’ then the arrest was illegal, and consequently false imprisonment was the remedy; while, on the other hand, if the party upon whose command or direction he acted had ‘reasonable ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 16 Ala. App. 315 - Rhodes v. McWilson

2. ““ * * * While it may not be accurate, in view of the above statute [§ 5211, Code 1896], to say that in every case it is necessary, in order to count on malicious prosecution, to aver the issuance of process and arrest thereunder, yet the averments must be such as to show a legal arrest as the commencement of a valid judicial proceeding.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Prince v. Bryant