Elza v. Chovan’s Empirical Analysis
1959
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 169 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 183 later decisions — most recently September 2024 · most notably Neison v. Hines (1995), Boggavarapu v. Ponist (1988)
6 federal appellate · 169 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 Karcesky v. Laria · Bellettiere v. Philadelphia · Schwartz v. Jaffe · Decker v. Kulesza · Patterson v. Palley Manufacturing Co.
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 183 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is the province of the jury to assess the worth of the testimony and to accept or reject the estimates given by witnesses. If the verdict bears a reasonable resemblance to the proven damages, it is not the function of the court to substitute its judgment for the jury’s. The mere fact that the verdict is low does not mean that it is inadequate.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage“While the appellate courts tend to uphold the trial courts, they do not abdicate their powers of review: Decker v. Kulesza, 369 Pa. 259 , 85 A.2d 413 (1952); Ropele v. Stewart, 185 Pa.Superior Ct. 522, 137 A.2d 895 (1958). It is their duty to review the evidence to see whether there was a clear case of injustice: Nikisher v. Benninger, 377 Pa. 564 , 105 A.2d 281 (1954). In discharging that duty some trademark must appear by which to distinguish cases of clear injustice from those in which the court below has merely ousted the jury and moved into their seats. Certainly the trial courts should give reasons for what they do when the issue is the weight of the evidence or the interests of justice: Bellettiere v. Philadelphia, 367 Pa. 638 , 81 A.2d 857 (1951). Trial courts cannot avoid gross abuses of discretion or convince us that a verdict is so unreasonably low as to present a clear case of injustice without using words of appropriate urgency and decisiveness.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The refusal of a new trial sought because of alleged inadequacy of the verdict is a matter peculiarly within the discretion of the trial court, and the appellate court will not reverse unless the verdict is so unreasonable as to bring conviction that it was influenced by partiality, passion, or prejudice, or by some misconception of the law or evidence in the case.”
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.