Johnson v. Valmac Industries’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “What, then, can be the explanation for the reversal of the Commission’s decision upon a question of fact? The answer apparently lies in the final words of the majority opinion, where it is said that compensation cases should be liberally construed and that doubtful cases should be resolved in favor of the claimant. It is undoubtedly true that the compensation law itself should be liberally construed in favor of the workman. It may also be true that the commissioners, within the limits of their consciences, should construe the evidence liberally in the claimant’s favor. But if the majority mean that it is reversible error for the Commission to fail to take a liberal view of the evidence in favor of the claim, the decision is demonstrably wrong for several reasons.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. 10 Ark. App. 254 - Central Maloney, Inc. v. York

2. “[W]e have no quarrel with the philosophy of workers’ compensation, and certainly none with the notion that the act should be interpreted whenever there is doubt as to its meaning, in favor of the claimant. But to say that when there is doubt remaining as to a factual issue, and the doubt has been caused by conflicting or equivocal testimony, the resolution of that doubt by the commission must always favor the claimant, is to rob the commission of its fact-finding function which is definitely prescribed by the statute and not to be deprived by us. (Emphasis by the Court.)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 10 Ark. App. 254 - Central Maloney, Inc. v. York