Dover Elevator Co. v. Swann’s Empirical Analysis
1994
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 10 district · 53 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 64 later decisions — most recently February 2018 · most notably Molesworth v. Brandon (1996), Holman v. Kelly Catering, Inc. (1994)
1 federal appellate · 10 district · 53 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 Eagle-Picher Industries, Inc. v. Balbos · Peterson v. Underwood · Benedick v. Potts · 69 Md. App. 342 - Pahanish v. Western Trails, Inc. · Sergeant Co. v. Pickett
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 64 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he jury is ... permitted, but not compelled, to infer a defendant's negligence without the aid of any direct evidence”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“concerning why negligence must have been the cause of the accident.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“If expert testimony is used to raise an inference that the accident could not happen had there been no negligence, then it is the expert witness, not an application of the traditional res ipsa loquitur doctrine, that raises the inference. The expert testimony offered in these “quasi res ipsa loquitur cases” differs somewhat from more traditional expert testimony because, instead of testifying that a particular act or omission constituted a failure to exercise due care, the expert testifies to the probability that the injury was caused by the failure to exercise due care. See Meda, 318 Md. at 428 , 569 A.2d at 207 . The expert also testifies that the accident ordinarily would not occur unless there was a failure to exercise the appropriate degree of care. Like a res ipsa loquitur case, such expert testimony is offered to explain why there is a probability of negligence, which may be inferred from the circumstances of the accident, even though the expert is unable to pinpoint any particular negligent conduct. Although such testimony does not isolate the specific negligent conduct, it does allow the jury to find negligence as the result of the expert’s opinion rather than by circumstantial evidence and common knowledge as in the usual res ipsa loquitur case.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.