Myrick v. James’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 6 district · 64 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 74 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “(1) the court is convinced that the rule of the prior decision operates harshly, unjustly and erratically to produce, in its case-by-case application, results that are not consonant with prevailing, well-established conceptions of fundamental fairness and rationally-based justice, (2) that conviction is buttressed by more than the commitment of the individual justices to their mere personal policy preferences, that is, by the substantial erosion of the concepts and authorities upon which the former rule is founded and that erosion is exemplified by disapproval of those conceptions and authorities in the better-considered recent cases and in authoritative scholarly writings, (3) the former rule is the creation of the court itself in the legitimate performance of its function in filling the interstices of statutory language by interpretation and construction of vague, indefinite and generic statutory terms, (4) the Legislature has not, subsequent to the court’s articulation of the former rule, established by its own definitive and legitimate pronouncement either specific acceptance, rejection or revision of the former rule as articulated by the court, and (5) the court can avoid the most severe impact of an overruling decision upon reliance interests that may have come into being during the existence of the former rule by creatively shaping the temporal effect of the new rule articulated by the holding of the overruling case.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Eaton v. Town of Wells · Fortin v. Roman Catholic Bishop of Portland

2. “a deliberate or solemn decision of a court, after argument on a question of law fairly arising in the case, the disposition of which is necessary to the determination of the case, is an authority or binding precedent in the same court and in other courts of equal or lower rank, in subsequent cases where the very point is again in controversy.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Bourgeois v. Great Northern Nekoosa Corp. · Shaw v. Jendzejec

3. “Actions for assault and battery, and for false imprisonment, slander, libel and malpractice of physicians and all others engaged in the healing art shall be commenced within 2 years after the cause of action accrues.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Myrick v. Central Maine Medical Center · Bolton v. Caine