Leek v. New South Express Lines’s Empirical Analysis
1940
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 23 later decisions — most recently June 1996
6 federal appellate · 15 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.
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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The right to recover on circumstantial evidence for death resulting from another’s negligence depends upon the reasonable and logical connection such proof establishes between the death and the negligent act alleged to have caused it. It is incumbent upon the plaintiff, in the absence of direct evidence, to show the existence of. such circumstances as would justify the inference that the injury which caused the death was due to the wrongful act of the defendant, and not leave the question to mere speculation or conjecture. The facts and circumstances shown should be reckoned with in the light of ordinary experience and such conclusions deduced therefrom as common sense dictates. ***- ****** “The plaintiff was bound to show something more than that the defendant was possibly responsible for the decedent’s death, in order to entitle him to a verdict. The burden was upon him, in the absence of positive evidence of that fact, to show not only the existence of such possible responsibility, but proof of circumstances which would furnish a reasonable basis for the inference by the jury of the ultimate fact that the death was caused by the wrongful act of the defendant in driving its truck upon the wrong side of the road. And this, in our opinion, he has not done.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.