Gray v. De Bretton’s Empirical Analysis
1939
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 64 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 75 later decisions — most recently September 2001 · most notably Tuley v. Heyd (1973), 140 Md. App. 282 - Baltimore Police Department v. Cherkes (2001)
3 federal appellate · 64 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 Rich and Hahn v. Graybar Elec. Co. · 44 Ohio App. 360 - Hanratty v. Godfrey · McCoy v. State · Sanders v. Humphries · 6 La. App. 382 - McVea v. Day
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 75 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“`The relation between a sheriff and his deputy is an official and not a private relation. The deputy is not a representative of the sheriff in his individual capacity, but he is a public officer whose authority and duty are regulated by law. As to the public, whose servants these officers are, the acts and omissions of a deputy sheriff are the acts and omissions of the sheriff himself.' (Emphasis by the Trial Judge)”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“. . . It would seem that if the deputy violated any duty that he owed to plaintiff and his children, the duty violated was not an official duty but was an individual and private duty owed by the deputy to all pedestrians upon the public highway.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“As between him and the prisoner whom he had in charge, the deputy was performing an official act, but as between him and pedestrians on the highway, he was negligently driving a car the same as any other motorist might negligently drive a car on the highway and cause injury to a pedestrian. If the situation had been that the deputy was walking along the street with his prisoner in charge, and for some reason personal to the deputy, he had struck a bystander with his hand or pistol, it could not be said that such an unlawful act on his part was done in the discharge of an official act. But, on the contrary, had he struck the prisoner, when there was no need for it, obviously his conduct in so doing would have been the violation of an official duty, a misfeasance for which the sheriff and his surety would have been liable.”
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.