Somerville v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It was also held that agency necessarily involved the right of control by the principal of the acts of the agent. Of course this is very true, yet it cannot be said that the relationship of principal and agent is absent if the 'purported principal clothes his agent with power and authority to exercise his own judgment in accomplishing a given task assigned by the principal; the principal may delegate to the agent certain discretionary matters as to the means employed to accomplish the task assigned him. This is better illustrated by a principal selecting a foreman over a crew of men to do a piece of work, and while the principal has control over his foreman, yet leaves it to such foreman' as to how the details are worked out. In such cases the foreman is nonetheless an agent, and so long as he is within the scope of authority given him, he acts for his principal.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Dodson v. Dooley