Branch v. Dempsey’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

39 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 39 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The purpose of the statute appears to be to permit the death certificate to be introduced as evidence of the fact of death, the time and place where it occurred, the identity of the deceased, the bodily injury or disease which was the cause of death, the disposition of the body and possibly other matters relating to the death. We think it was not the purpose of the Legislature to make the certificate competent evidence of whatever might be stated thereon. ...””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. 85 N.C. App. 174 - Drain v. United Services Life Insurance Co. · State v. Watson

2. “"To say, in these circumstances, that the owner of a motor truck may constitute a person his agent for the purpose of the operation of such truck over public streets and highways, and to say at the same time that such operator is no longer the agent of such owner when an accident occurs, for the purpose of truthfully relating the facts concerning the occurrence to an investigating police officer on the scene shortly thereafter, seems to me to erect an untenable fiction, neither contemplated by the parties nor sanctioned by public policy. It is almost like saying that a statement against interest in the instant case could only have been made had the truck been operated by an officer or the board of directors of the Corporation owning the truck; and trucks are not operated that way. To exclude the statement of the driver of the truck as to the speed of the truck at the time of the collision, which was not only clearly excessive in the circumstances, but even greater than the speed limit permitted on the highway between intersections, would be to deny an agency which I believe inherently exists regardless of whether the statement is made at the moment of the impact, or some minutes later to an investigating officer, or other authorized person." Martin v. Savage Truck Line, 121 F.Supp. 417, 419 (D.C.1954).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Pearce v. Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Co.

3. ““As Wigmore points out, it is in the field tortious liability that the scope of an agent’s authority is most difficult to determine. ‘For example, if A is an agent to drive a locomotive, and a collision ensues, why may not his admissions, after the collision, acknowledging his carelessness, be received against the employer? Are his statements under such circumstances not made in performance of work he was set to do?’ Wigmore, op. cit. supra § 1078. In discussing this problem, he cites Northern Central Coal Co. v. Hughes, 224 Fed. 57 (8th Cir.) and Rankin v. Brockton Public Market, 257 Mass. 6 , 153 N.E. 97 , both personal injury cases in which the post rem statements of the employee were held incompetent as against the employer. He argues that it is absurd to hold that an employee has the power to make the employer heavily liable, yet that his extrajudicial confession of facts constituting negligence may not be heard in court. ‘[T]he pedantic unpracticalness of this rule as now universally administered makes a laughingstock of court methods .... Such quibbles bring the law justly into contempt with laymen.’ Ibid." Branch v. Dempsey, supra at 757-58, 145 S.E. 2d at 412 (Sharp, J. dissenting).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Pearce v. Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Co.