Moffatt v. Tenney’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

34 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 34 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““* * * As has been repeatedly held, the duty imposed upon the trial court necessarily involves a large discretion as to the form and style in which instructions to the jury shall be given. Unnecessary instructions do not necessarily make a charge erroneous. Instructions once given in substance need not be repeated. If all proper requests to charge are given in substance, and no instructions are given that are erroneous or misleading, the court must be held to have discharged its duty, and the judgment, if well founded in other respects, should not be disturbed, even though some unnecessary instructions have been given and some correct requests to charge have not been repeated. To hold the trial courts to a stricter rule than this would practically result in overthrowing the judgment in nearly every contested case and would be a clear violation of section 78 of the Code. (Citing cases.)””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Mallett v. Pirkey

2. “"contemplate circumstances not relating to the wrongful act itself, but such as affect the actual damages suffered by the surviving party entitled to sue, either by way of diminishing or enhancing the same."”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Mangus v. Miller