Herchenbach v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1946
Citation profile
51 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 53 later decisions — most recently June 2016 · most notably 73 Wash. 2d 616 - State v. Martin (1968), 41 Va. App. 752 - Edwards v. Commonwealth (2003)
51 state decisions — followed in 11 states
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 106 W. Va. 46 - State v. Masters · 74 Cal. App. 415 - People v. Graves · State v. Verrill
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 53 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Knowledge necessarily is an essential element of the crime. This does not mean that the person should have positive knowledge of the extent of the damage or injuries inflicted. It does mean that, in order to be guilty of violating the statute, "the driver must be aware that harm has been done; it must be present in his mind that there has been an injury; and then, with that in his mind, he must deliberately go away without making himself known. If an injury is inflicted under such circumstances as would ordinarily superinduce the belief in a reasonable person that injury would flow, or had flowed, from the accident or collision, then it is the duty of the operator to stop his vehicle."”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The driver of any vehicle involved in an accident in which a person is killed or injured or in which an attended vehicle or other attended property is damaged shall immediately stop as close to the scene of the accident as possible without obstructing traffic, as provided in § 46.2-888, and report his name, address, driver’s license number, and vehicle registration number forthwith to the State Police or local law-enforcement agency, to the person struck and injured if such person appears to be capable of understanding and retaining the information, or to the driver or some other occupant of the vehicle collided with or to the custodian of other damaged property.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“conceded that it was a very foggy night. ... so dense that it was impossible for the operator to see more than a few feet in advance of his vehicle . At times the headlights were raised in order for the driver to see as far ahead as possible. When this was done , it was impossible to discern objects on the roadbed immediately in front of the bus.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Clarke v. Galdamez
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.