Ferruzza v. Pittsburgh’s Empirical Analysis
1958
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 51 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 54 later decisions — most recently July 1999 · most notably Bohner v. Eastern Express, Inc. (1961), Enfield v. Stout (1960)
3 federal appellate · 51 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 Fire Insurance Patrol v. Boyd · MacDonald v. Pennsylvania Railroad · Clewell v. Pummer · Kindt v. Reading Co. · Bruker v. Carlisle Borough
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 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Was the City’s driver guilty of negligence of a reckless nature? This depends upon whether the fire truck sounded its siren or rang its bell. This in turn depends — all parties agree — upon whether plaintiff’s testimony that he did not hear a siren or bell was, under the circumstances here involved, sufficiently positive in form and substance to take the case to the jury. “The question of whether a statement of a witness, to wit, that he did not hear a sound or that no bell was rung, was negative or positive testimony and was or was not sufficient to take the case to the jury, in the face of strong positive affirmative testimony that a bell was rung, has vexed and perplexed the Courts. The earlier cases held that a statement by a witness that he did not hear any sound or warning was negative and insufficient to prove negligence, if there was affirmative testimony that a bell was rung or an audible sound given.” And the Court cited with approval Costack v. Pennsylvania R. R. Co., 376 Pa. 341 , at page 348, 102 A. 2d 127 (1954), where the Court said: “The question is not one merely of form of expression— whether, for example, the witness says that Mo warning was given’ as distinguished from his saying that Me heard no warning’; (Kindt v. Reading Company, 352 Pa. 419, 426 , 43 A. 2d 145, 149 ). Rather it is whether he had acuteness of hearing, sufficient opportunity for hearing, and occasion for listening, and whether all the other circumstances tended to show that if a warning”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Merkel v. Scranton“under all the circumstances [shows] a reckless disregard of the safety of others.”
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.