Walker v. Britton’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 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 1 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““By their verdict the jury found defendant guilty of negligence, and they must necessarily have found, under the instructions of the court, that plaintiff was free from contributory negligence. This being* true, the remaining’ consideration for the jury was the assessment of plaintiff’s damages. The uncontradicted testimony shows that she was entitled to substantial damages. It will hardly do to say that the verdict was equivalent to a verdict of ‘Not guilty.’ It possibly may have been in dollars, but not in law. There is this difference: A six-cent verdict fixes upon defendant the responsibility for the collision. A verdict of ‘Not guilty’ exonerates him therefrom. The trial court explained to the jury in detail what their duties were in the premises, and opened the way for them to find that defendant was without fault, but they persisted in finding him guilty, and they should have followed that finding by an allowance of some reasonable compensation for what she had lost and suffered by reason of that negligence.” Walker v. Britton, 193 Mich. 174 .”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Zielinski v. Harris