17 Md. App. 451 - Robinson v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

42 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 42 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “‘This statutory crime, whether called ‘larceny’ or not, is in effect an ‘included offense.’ It has all of the elements of larceny except the intent to steal, and is limited to a small portion of the general subject matter of larceny.””

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 20 Md. App. 296 - Henry v. State · 18 Md. App. 472 - Shope v. State

2. ““According to the essence of its function, an appellate court is concerned with whether the holding, and not with whether the reasoning, of the decision appealed from is correct, and generally a correct decision will not be disturbed on appeal because it is based on an incorrect ground, especially where the correct ground was formally presented to the court below, though not there acted upon, and the view has also been taken that in a proper case a correct decision should be sustained even though the appellate court finds it necessary to resort to a theory not presented to the court below. The general principle that a correct result will not be set aside because based on an incorrect ground applies also to appeals from decisions of intermediate appellate courts. Where a decision is based on two grounds, either of which, independent of the other, is sufficient to support it, it will not be reversed on appeal because one of those grounds is erroneous. Similarly, an appellee who had made an alternate pleading need not show that both alternative theories are sustained by the evidence and need not, at his peril, determine which of the two alternative theories was adopted by the trial court and justify it. If the trial court made erroneous findings, its decision will nevertheless not be reversed on appeal if the findings which it should have made would support its decision. The appellant has the burden of proof that no correct finding would sustain the decision appealed from.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 77 Md. App. 199 - Rogers v. Baker

3. ““The purport of Article 27, § 349, can best be appreciated after a thumbnail sketch of how it came to .be. It is an offshoot of § 348 and shares with it an ancestry tracing back to 1547. Horse stealers were more threatening to the pillars of Tudor society than other mere thieves. Chapter 13 of the Acts of 1 Edw. VI removed the benefit of clergy from them, thereby condemning them to the gallows. In 1744, the Colonial Assembly of Maryland brought over the English horse stealing statute with its penalty of ‘death as a felon without benefit of clergy’. In 1799, coverage was extended to cover the theft of a ‘jack, jenny or mule’. Subsequent amendments added sundry varieties of livestock and wagons to the protected list of chattels. In 1809, the maximum penalty was lowered to fourteen years in the penitentiary. The present Unauthorized Use shoot branched off from the parent stem in 1880. It filled the gap sometimes left by the absence in the unlawful taker of an animus furandi. It applied to ‘any person . . . who shall . . . take and carry away out of the custody or use of any person . . . any horse, mare, colt, gelding, mule, ass, sheep, hog, ox or cow, or any carriage, wagon, buggy, cart or any other vehicle’ though taken for his ‘present use, and not with the intent of appropriating or converting the same.’ ” (Emphasis supplied.)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 20 Md. App. 296 - Henry v. State