Doane v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
27 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 27 later decisions — most recently December 2012 · most notably Briley v. Commonwealth (1980), Heacock v. Commonwealth (1984)
27 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.
Relationships
Relies on King v. Commonwealth · Dunlavey v. Commonwealth · Beck v. Commonwealth · Strouther v. Commonwealth
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 27 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Once the Commonwealth is stripped of the benefit of the fiction, there is neither a showing of causal relationship nor a showing of nexus between the larceny, which was complete with the defendant’s asportation of the car in Richmond, and the accidental killing of Mrs. Terry in Smyth County the following day. Whether that showing must be one of causal relationship, or whether a showing of mere nexus will suffice, is a question which we defer to another day. 2”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“the defendant, who continued to possess and use the car in derogation of the rights of the lawful owner, was still in the prosecution of a felonious act at the time of the accident resulting in [the victim’s] death. The nexus is provided ... because the automobile was “the instrumentality of continued asportation and the killing, as well as the subject matter of the larceny.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Hippler
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.