Commonwealth v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis
1955
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 34 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 47 later decisions — most recently March 1996 · most notably Commonwealth v. Redline (1958), Commonwealth Ex Rel. Smith v. Myers (1970)
3 federal appellate · 34 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 Smith v. Allwright · Commonwealth v. Drum · Commonwealth v. Bolish · Commonwealth v. Lowry · Commonwealth v. Almeida
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 47 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“As we have already seen, the “causation” requirement for responsibility in a felony-murder is that the homicide stem from the commission of the felony. Obviously, the assumed analogy between that concept and the tort-liarequirement of proximate cause is not conclusive. Hit were, then the fctrme of supervening cause, which f" centuries courts have recognized a"d rendered operative on questions of Primate cause, would have to be considered and passed upon by the Jary- But- that qualification, the ^ disr^arded^137 . d 7 , 48 .)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.