Commonwealth v. Bartell’s Empirical Analysis
1957
Citation profile
44 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 50 later decisions — most recently April 2009 · most notably Commonwealth v. Gee (1976), Commonwealth v. EVANS (1959)
44 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 Mudano v. Phila. Rapid Transit Co. · Commonwealth v. Phillips · Commonwealth v. Bruno · Commonwealth v. Kosh · Risbon v. Cottom
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 50 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is true, of course, that a case should not go to a jury where the party having the burden offers testimony of a witness, or of various witnesses, which is so contradictory on the essential issues that any finding by the jury would be a mere guess (citations omitted). However, the mere fact that there are some inconsistencies is not alone sufficient to destroy the case, (citations omitted). The function of a jury is to reconcile conflicting testimony; it is only when the testimony is so contradictory on the basic issues as to make any verdict based thereon pure conjecture that the jury should not be permitted to consider it.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“If a witness has made inconsistent or contradictory statements they may affect his credibility . . . but they do not make him an incompetent witness. In fact, even if a witness testified differently at a former trial his testimony at the subsequent trial is not to be rejected for this reason alone; such contradictory statements “ ‘affect his credibility, but do not authorize an instruction to the jury not to believe him.’ ” [Citations omitted.]”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.