McNack v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 district · 18 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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[Pjublic officials who act and react in the milieu of criminal activity where every decision to deploy law enforcement personnel is fraught with uncertainty must have broad discretion to proceed without fear of civil liability in the unflinching discharge of their duties.... [TJhe public interest is not served by allowing a jury of lay (persons) with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight to second-guess the exercise of a police [officerj’s discretionary professional duty. Such discretion is no discretion at all. [IJf the police were held to a duty enforceable by each individual member of the public, then every complaint— whether real, imagined, or frivolous [ — ] would raise the spectre of civil liability for failure to respond. Rather than exercise reasoned discretion and evaluate each particular allegation on its own merits the police may well be pressured to make hasty arrests solely to eliminate the threat of personal prosecution by the putative victims. Such a result historically has been viewed, and rightly so, as untenable, unworkable and unwise. Furthermore, a policy which places a duty on a police officer to insure the safety of each member of the community would create an unnecessary burden on the judicial system. Under such circumstances, the slightest error of a policeman would give rise to a potential lawsuit.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Jones v. State

2. “affirmatively acted for the [family's] benefit, that they did anything to induce the [ ] family to rely on them, or that they acted in any way differently than they would act responding to any complaint of any other member of the general public.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 239 Md. App. 515 - Howard v. Crumlin

3. “911 employee affirmatively acted to protect or assist the specific individual, or a specific group of individuals like the individual, in need of assistance, thereby inducing the specific reliance of the individual on the employee.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 239 Md. App. 515 - Howard v. Crumlin