New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad v. Dox’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

13 federal appellate · 2 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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “plaintiff's right to a jury trial, as guaranteed by the Seventh Amendment to the Federal Constitution, is not an unqualified right to have the jury pass on issues of negligence and proximate cause in all cases. At the date of the adoption of the Seventh Amendment, and for centuries prior thereto, the common law had prescribed a function to be performed by the trial judge, as well as a function to be performed by the jury, in the determination of issues of negligence and of proximate causation. See Herron v. Southern Pacific Co., 1931, 283 U.S. 91 , 51 S.Ct. 383, 75 L.Ed. 857. The jury was the body competent to decide all questions of credibility of witnesses, and all questions of fact fairly in dispute, together with inferences reasonably to be drawn therefrom. But the case might never reach the jury, because the trial judge had to determine the preliminary issue whether the plaintiff had shown enough from which a fair-minded jury might legitimately return a plaintiff's verdict.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Smith v. Reinauer Oil Transport, Inc.