V New York Central & Hudson River Railroad Company and the Steam Tug Charles E Matthews John D Daily et al.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

114 federal appellate · 35 district · 7 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 261 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The New York Central Railroad gets all its damages in any view, unless Sturgis v. Boyer, 24 How. 110 , should be overruled. In that ease it was held that a tug having control of a vessel in tow was solely responsible to a lighter upset by the vessel through the fault of the tug alone. * * w “We see no reason why the decision should not stand. No doubt the fiction that a vessel may be a wrongdoer and may be held, although the owners are not personally responsible on principles of agency or otherwise, is carried further here than in England. The China, 7 Wall. 53 ; The Barnstable, 181 U. S. 464 , 467, 468; Homer Ramsdell Transportation Co. v. La Compagnie Generate Transatlantique, 182 U. S. 406 , 413, 414. See the Blackheath, 195 U. S. 361 , 366. Possibly the survival of the fiction has been helped by the convenient security that it furnishes, just as no doubt the responsibility of a master for a servant’s torts, that he has done «his best to prevent, has been helped by the feeling that it was desirable to have some one who was able to pay. See Williamson v. Price, 4 Martin, N. S. 399, 401; Williams v. Jones, 3 H. & C. 256, 263. But after all a fiction is not a satisfactory ground for taking one man’s property to satisfy another man’s wrong, and it should not be extended. There is a practical line and a difference in degree between the ease where the harm is done by the mismanagement of the offending vessel and that where it is done by the mismanagement of another vessel to wh”

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. The Cromwell · The Helen

2. ““There is nothing stated sufficient to reopen the question, if there is one, as to changing the apportionment when there are different degrees of blame.” ( 212 U.S. at 476 , 29 S.Ct. at 341 , citing The Atlas, supra.)”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 209 F. Supp. 576 - NM Paterson & Sons, Limited v. City of Chicago · 125 F. Supp. 110 - In Re Adams'petition

3. “The only fault on the part of 18 D * * * is the absence of a light; and it said that, `therefore' it was party to a common fault. We doubt whether the conclusion follows from the premises. When a duty is imposed for the purpose of preventing a certain consequence, a breach of it that does not lead to that consequence does not make a defendant liable for the tort of a third person merely because the observance of the duty might have prevented that tort. * * * The question arises, therefore, whether the duty to give warning by a light was imposed upon 18 D for any other purpose than to prevent collision with itself. If not, then, as the boats are dealt with as individuals, and not as parts of a single whole, we do not see how the absence of a light on 18 D can be said to have contributed to the loss.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 77 F. Supp. 264 - The Norwich Victory