Davidson Steamship Company Plff v. United States of America’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

48 federal appellate · 9 district · 32 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 119 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““What is there about the respectable, substantial and all pervading business of insurance that would require a different rule to be adopted with reference to it than is adopted with reference to every other business that may from time to time be directly or indirectly interested in the rule of a lawsuit, although not a party to it? We have not such a base estimate of the integrity of jurors generally, nor such a contempt for the jury system, as to lead us to believe that jurors, in violation of their oaths, render verdicts pro and con according to their suspicions that by their verdict a cause of action may or may not arise against an insurance company; nor are we willing to pronounce a judgment which would condemn a system that is ingrafted upon the government by its fundamental law and has been employed by civilized nations since a period of which history has no record, a system which the Supreme Court of the United States has twice eulogized as ‘twelve men of the average of the community, comprising men of education and men of little education, men of learning and men whose learning consists only in what, they have themselves seen and heard, the merchant, the mechanic, the farmer, the laborer; these sit together, consult, apply their separate experience of the affairs of life to the facts proven, and draw a unanimous conclusion. This average judgment thus given it is the great effort of the law to obtain. It is assumed that twelve men know more of the common affairs of lif”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 52 Ohio App. 416 - Salerno v. Oppman

2. ““There is an obligation oh all persons to take the care which, in the ordinary circumstances of the case, a reasonable and prudent man would take, and the omission of that care constitutes negligence. It was said by Mr. Justice McLean delivering the opinion in Culbertson v. Shaw et al., 18 How. 584 , 587, 15 L. Ed. 493 : ‘Where a steamer is about, to enter a harbor, great caution is required. There being no usage as to an open way, the vigilance is thrown upon the entering vessel. Ordinary care, under such circumstances, will not excuse a steamer for a wrong done.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Guy v. Donald

3. “[T]here is an obligation on all persons to take the care which, under ordinary circumstances of the case, a reasonable and prudent man would take, and the omission of that care constitutes negligence.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Elaine Jones v. Griffith